


there must have been a moment where we could have said no

by magdaliny



Series: quiet americans [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Amputation, Consent Issues, Cuddling, Feeding Tubes, Fluff, Gore, Identity Issues, M/M, Medical Trauma, Moral Ambiguity, Recovery, Self-Harm, Suicide, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, intravenous drug use, the author has not been entirely replaced by a pod person, too many literary references, what is identity anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-05 01:37:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 154,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10294451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdaliny/pseuds/magdaliny
Summary: The Soldier remembers this: he wakes up in the snow.





	1. this place is not a place of honor

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Был момент, когда мы могли сказать нет](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12627858) by [Miarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miarra/pseuds/Miarra)



> This monster is somewhat darker than my usual offerings, at least through the first two chapters, so please consider the tags a friendly warning. Most non-English words are translated in hypertext.
> 
> Finally, there isn't enough thanks in the world for my tireless betas, intherosevalley ([now on Tumblr](http://intherosevalley.tumblr.com)!) and H.

**Rosencrantz:** That's it, then, is it? The sun's going down. Or the earth's coming up, as the fashionable theory has it. Not that it makes any difference. What was it all about? When did it begin? Couldn't we just stay put? I mean no one is going to come on and drag us off... They'll just have to wait. We're still young...fit...we've got years... ( _a cry_ ) We've done nothing wrong! We didn't harm anyone. Did we?  
**Guildenstern:** I can't remember.  
**Rosencrantz:** ( _pulls himself together_ ) All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relived. ( _And he disappears from view. Guildenstern does not notice._ )  
**Guildenstern:** Our names shouted in a certain dawn...a message...a summons... There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said—no. But somehow we missed it.

-Tom Stoppard, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_

 

What makes up a life; events or the recollection of events?  
How much of recollection is invention?  
Whose invention?

-Jeanette Winterson, _Art & Lies_

 

 

###### 2015

It takes Steve a long time to find the secret entrance.

( _Secret entrance_ —god, the absurdity of it: it's not like he isn't faced with absurdities every day on the job, but something about the cleverly concealed door and the honest-to-god escape chute, the ludicrous economy of it, makes him want to laugh and maybe not stop. Of course there'd be a secret entrance; you couldn't walk the Winter Soldier through an active banking firm. He wonders whether HYDRA execs ever had to be brought in the back way, a bunch of old men in their crisp suits trying to climb down a metal ladder with any dignity at all.)

Steve's here because the silent alarm tripped. Not the one in the bank proper, but the backdoor, the one that sent an alert to a HYDRA dropbox, one of many Natasha's sent Steve the codes for over the last eight months. He's expecting the general structure he finds in the basement of the bank, because minor variations aside, HYDRA's pretty predictable about their architecture, but—

Steve's been cracking a lot of bases; he's got this. And usually they're an anticlimax: empty, stripped, empty, one confused secretary, empty. It's troubling or weird about a third of the time, but the emptiness makes those instances almost more sad than distressing. A rack of test tubes, one spilling its contents onto a nearby pipette as if its user had dropped both in a panic. The twisted bodies of things that might've been dogs, some with too much skin for their bones, some with too many bones for their skin. A room perforated with a frankly ridiculous number of bullet holes, but no sign of human damage. Rows and rows of cages holding twenty-two dead mice, nine dead monkeys, and one live badger. A wall covered in photographs of children, front and side like mugshots, every single one of them blue-eyed. Steve had been starting to think he'd be ready for anything to greet him inside the next bunker.

He's not ready for _this_.

The room isn't a surprise; many of the larger bases have a workshop, power tools on the walls, usually a good welding kit. The blood startles him, but only because it's so fresh. He can smell how coppery-sharp it is from the hall, so whatever triggered the alarm probably also triggered the blood, in one way or another. The circular saw in the middle of the room looks as though someone's upended a bucket of red paint onto it, and it's spread halfway to the stairs, helped along by what looks like a dozen separate sets of footprints. One set is bare, each toe clearly defined.

Mostly, though, it's the five HYDRA goons in white hazmat suits, clustered around a chunk of something that might have been human this morning, taking pictures with their smartphones. One of them has a pink sparkly case with a kitten charm dangling from it. Steve makes an incredulous noise, and they all look up. One of them says, “Oh shit.”

The ensuing fight is more like bowling. After stashing the unconscious goons in the janitor's closet, Steve investigates the scene.

It takes him a minute to put the pieces together, but when he does, he has to go sit in the doorway for a while with his head in his hands.

And then, when he thinks he can manage words, he calls Sam.

 

* * *

 

###### 19??

“Come on, Joe DiMaggio, put your money where your mouth is!”

 

###### 1990

Murray's dozing above his overflowing desk, jerking awake every so often to bitch about bureaucracy and the perfidiousness of paperwork, while the Soldier looks over his file for the hundredth time. It's not like he has anything better to do, or any more interesting reading material, unless he wants to re-read Murray's gardening magazines or dig out the stultifying user manual for the new flamethrower that's functionally indistinguishable from the last model, and honestly he'd rather shoot himself in the foot. They're waiting for HQ's approval of a mission they sent down the tubes weeks ago, the one for which somebody conveniently forgot to include authorization protocols in the briefing package. Down the hall, he can hear the STRIKE boys getting rowdy. Something's bound to get broken if HQ keeps their collective thumbs up their asses much longer.

His file, unlike manuals and paperwork, is always quality entertainment, because it's half a trip down memory lane and half an ever-changing series of blanks. On one reading, he might not recognize a particular mission at all; on the next, he might be treated to a full-color surround-sound slideshow. It's impossible to predict what level of remembrance he'll run into, opening it up. He's tried to make a lethargic study out of it, making tally marks in the margins with a pencil if he remembers more than 50% of any given debrief. Typically, the more recent the mission, the greater the number of tally marks beside it, but a bunch of Zola's unhinged, partially decoded case notes have their own forest of lines. The Soldier tries not to dwell on those any longer than he has to, and that's not cowardice—just good old-fashioned self preservation. Put your own oxygen mask on first, except with his own brain. He's notorious for being non-functional when he's upset.

Zola aside, the file's comforting. It tells him: this is real, this is you, this is everything that ever happened to you, whether you remember it or not. Anything that's not in the file can be dismissed as a glitch in the software. Free association. An insufficiently busy mind creating something out of nothing.

And then there's the ravine.

The ravine bugs the shit out of him, because it's not in his file, and there's enough _wrong_ with it that he can't ever entirely convince himself of its particulars, or whether it was even real. Enough elements of it are taken from life to be based on something that really happened to him, at least—but there's the brain, again, spinning fantasies to fill in the holes. He has to assume it's mostly true, or else it'll drive him nuts, trying to track down details only his past self could have confirmed.

The Soldier remembers this: he wakes up in the snow.

He doesn't know what year it was or where he was sent—he suspects Russia, it's Russians who come and find him later, face-down next to a frozen river—but this is his very earliest memory. It's easy to slot this one at the beginning of the patchwork because it's the only one where he has a left arm, a real one, not the marvel of engineering they gave him later. Right now, in the memory, it's the left arm that's the problem. It's trapped under a boulder the size of a small car.

The brain isn't built to accurately replicate the feeling of pain in hindsight, but the Soldier doesn't remember experiencing any, not in that moment. It's the cold, maybe, or shock, but he looks at his arm crushed between rock and permafrost and doesn't feel a thing. He's worried, but not about himself, which has always confused him. Now, he wonders: were there other operatives on the mission? Did the mission fail because he was trapped down in that gorge, clothes frozen to the ground, caught like a fox in a trap?

The Soldier spends the first day trying to melt the permafrost under his arm, hopeful that he can warm up the ground enough to dig a small hole, just enough to pull it out. It might be broken; hell, the bones might be ground to dust, but at least he'll be free. His progress is negligible. At sunset he stops to eat the three squares of chocolate in his lowermost pocket. In the same pocket he finds a piece of paper, unexpected, folded in quarters. He puts a piece of chocolate in his mouth and opens it up awkwardly, the rough skin of his thumb catching the edge. Inside is a drawing of a smiling young man from the shoulders up; his dark hair messy, wet-looking, falling in his eyes. He's beautiful, in a rough-hewn way. The Soldier has no idea who the young man is to him, or how his picture could have ended up in the Soldier's pocket, but his cheerful face is good to look at. In the grim white pit the Soldier is trapped in, the drawing is a spark of life, a flower in the wasteland.

The terrific drop in temperature overnight undoes all of his work. More than once before dawn he thinks he's about to die, shock and the subzero temperature making his blood sluggish, not to mention the broken things slowly grinding themselves back together under his skin. He must have fallen a long way. Caused a rockslide on his way down from wherever. Maybe he dropped out of the sky. Bailed from a plane. It sounds like the stupid kind of thing he'd do before he got his head on straight in the mid-seventies.

He remembers being afraid.

He spends the second day alternatively calling out and trying to shift the rock, which further proves his young-and-stupid theory. _There's no one out here, you dumb kid_ , he wants to tell his past self. That dumb kid yells until he can't yell anymore, until his throat closes raw around cold air. Even looking at the drawing of the man isn't enough to lift his despair.

The second night is...bad.

He spends the third day waiting to die. He slips in and out of consciousness. When snow drifts up around him, he doesn't try to kick it off or drink any of it. He stopped shivering long ago. When night falls, he barely notices. Hour after hour, his body refuses to quit.

At dawn, he knows what he needs to do.

He takes out both of the knives he keeps in his boots. They're freshly sharpened, which is good, but they're not remotely sanitary, which might be a problem. It would be a horrible sort of irony if he was to survive three days in the snow only to succumb to something mundane like blood poisoning. He uses the first knife to cut through his jacket and the two shirts he's wearing underneath, as close to the rock as he can, rolling the fabric up his arm and out of the way. Near the crush point, his skin is ugly black and red, mottled and swollen. Instead of the rot he expects, it smells vaguely sweet. Not the bright sweet of sugar or the dark sweet of honey, but a cloying floral thing like crushed roses. When he remembers this, he thinks about the incorruptibility of saints, how they're supposed to give off the aroma of flowers through their pores. He's not a saint, so maybe every body does it, given the opportunity.

He estimates the angle he'll need and starts cutting with the second knife. The pain is bad but not unbearable, sharp nauseating sparks softened by cold and exhaustion. In the strange floating place he's found himself, it's almost beautiful—red on the snow and his dark blue jacket, the splay of muscle fibers against the blade, bone slowly coming up white in the gap. Cutting the nerves almost kills him; just touching them with the knife makes him whine through gritted teeth. He snaps them one by one, breathing hard into his shoulder while he waits for each successive wave of fire to die down. By comparison, twisting and flinging himself at the rock until his humerus breaks is the easiest thing in the world.

The shattered bone slides out of the dead part of his arm, and he's free. Bleeding, but not bleeding out. Starving, but standing. It could be worse. He doesn't bother trying to make a bandage for the stump, just leans it into a drift until the bleeding slows to a gummy trickle, and then he starts to walk.

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear that freeing his arm was the least of his problems. The Soldier is trapped at the bottom of a sheer-sided crevasse. It's maybe a mile to the scrub-lined edges, far above him, and there's no way he can scale the walls in the state he's in, let alone with one arm. By the time the sun has disappeared from view, maybe mid-afternoon, he's shivering violently, his body remembering how to function. He falls often, once on the stump, which makes him roar into the snow like a child. He walks all night, stumbling blind, jolts of pain shooting up his legs hurting worse than the arm.

Sunrise brings the Soldier into a widening, and then a clearing. He lets out a whoop he'll be embarrassed by later, and runs drunkenly into the open on half-frozen legs. He startles a red deer and her two fawns. They bound away from him and disappear. Where they were standing, he finds the river, frozen into stiff mounds marked by odd scratches: the doe trying to scrape through the ice with her hooves to find water. He tries the same trick with the heel of his boot, and falls on his ass. He tries again, sitting. It's no use. The ice is too thick. He laughs for no reason.

The rest of the memory is scattershot, like a damaged film strip, periods of juddering blackness cut with misty pictures. He lays down: for a moment, just for a moment. He's so tired. A man in a fur hat looks down at him. His own limp feet catching on rocks, his stump leaving a trail of red, someone dragging him through the snow. Warmth. A roof over his head. Someone swearing as they break off the exposed shard of bone sticking out of his arm like an arrowhead. The cooked meat of an animal, and then the smell of his own meat burning. He screams when they cauterize the stump. And then: nothing.

The memory tells him a few things, smoked as they are from time and too much consideration. The man in the fur hat was wearing a Soviet uniform, one that isn't used these days, so the Soldier is old, older than he looks. Memory is tricky; something tells him he wasn't an operative then, but in light of what happened afterward—it doesn't make sense. He was already enhanced. It's that dogged not-dying that tips him off, more than anything else: bones coming together under the skin. They once sent him to—where? Ukraine, Russia, Poland?—and his mission was a spectacular failure. There were unimportant letters in his pocket (letters, because the Russians take them out while he watches; unimportant, because he doesn't remember feeling afraid when they read them, only ashamed).

He doesn't mind not knowing who he was then. He can't remember anyone significant—no parents, no lovers, no children—and that's for the best, really. It saves him from sentimentality, from looking at a target and hesitating because she has his mother's eyes. For something with his function, memories of a life before could be inconvenient at best and disastrous at worst. But one thing bothers him sometimes, in the liminal spaces between sleeping and waking, in the darkness of the cryo chamber before the ice crawls into his bones, like an itch he can't scratch at the back of his brain.

How did it all go to shit so fast?

 

###### 19??

The Soldier also remembers this: before he was the Soldier, he was nothing.

 

☙

 

He is captured by the enemy. Who is the enemy? He doesn't know. But his own people wouldn't interrogate him in languages he doesn't understand, wouldn't shine lights in his eyes and pull out his remaining nails, so they must be on the wrong side. He tells them again and again: he knows nothing. He does not know anything. He does not know who he is. He is injured; that is all he knows. He is injured.

They leave the room. They come back.

They say: this is a debriefing. You must cooperate. Why do you betray your allies?

Maybe everyone is the enemy.

 

☙

 

They take his clothes. The Russians have put his things back in his pockets. The men take the letters out and read them aloud. Laughter. The drawing is unfolded. Held up beside his face. _Ah_ , they say. _Hübscher Junge. Ist dein Freundin ein Künstler?_

They burn his letters one by one. They burn the drawing in front of his face, close enough to scorch his brow. He snaps at their fingers, grieving. The truth will not occur to him until nightfall, when they leave him. Damp straw, damp stone. He feels his face. The orbits of his eyes, the bow of his mouth. He pulls a curl of hair into the moonlight. He weeps, there, in the straw. Someone has loved him. Someone drew him. Someone thought he was a spark.

 

☙

 

They shave his head. They clean him with a hose. When he tries to kill the men with the hose, they chain him to the wall. Awkwardly: new bolts must be drilled, a chain wrapped twice around his shoulder, digging into his armpit. Thick black sutures at the end of his stump. It's become septic twice; the fevers take him, and the convulsions, and then he gets better. He thinks it will become septic again. Their water isn't very clean.

When he tells them, they direct the hose onto his stump until he loses consciousness.

 

☙

 

He can read German. He can understand a little Russian. He can't speak German or Russian. The guards think this is very funny. They ask him questions and hit him when he doesn't respond, belts and horsewhips, whatever they can find in nearby rooms. They grow bored when he refuses to scream. One of them disappears and returns with a length of chain. The chain, inexpertly wielded, wraps around his neck and smacks the breath out of him for a full minute. He coughs and gags on the floor. He's not boring anymore.

They say: _sprich mir nach_. He does, badly, gravel in his throat, and they laugh. They beat him around the shoulders with a thin cane. He says: _Hör. Pazhalsta. Bitte._

 _Bitte_ , the tallest one says, very distinctly.

 _Bitte_ , he says.

 _Ja_ , the tallest one says. _Ja, gut, gut_.

The cane lifts. A piece of candy dissolving on his bitten tongue.

 

☙

 

He attempts to escape. His bare feet on damp stone, slipping. He cuts his heel on the sill before he jumps. There are no bars on the windows here. When the wind steals his breath, when he has time to shout, when his bones splinter on the rocks below, he learns why: there's no point in barring a window no man could climb up to. He looks away from the stone walls, the buttresses, out over the cloud-quilted valleys. He waits to die. He doesn't know where he is. That seems a greater tragedy than not knowing his name.

He doesn't die. He screams when they collect him.

Anger, not pain.

 

☙

 

They beat him. They tell him: do not try to escape. This is what will happen.

When he clumsily slits his own throat with a shard of ice from the eave of his cell, they stitch him up and wait until he can stand. They bring him a filthy child, shaved bald, sores around the mouth, eyes like clear water. They strap a gun to his hand. Wire is wrapped around his finger, around the trigger. They use his hand to shoot the child between the eyes. They tell him: do not try to escape. This is what will happen.

He tries to escape. They beat him until pink froth comes out of his mouth, his nose. They beat him until the commandant stops them.

“Zola needs him in one piece,” the commandant says.

He laughs until he vomits blood onto their shoes.

 

☙

 

He tries to escape.

 

☙

 

They put him in a room with several men. The men all look alike: dirty clothing and shaved heads and eyes like empty pools. He can't tell them apart. They say: perhaps this will teach you to be more cooperative. When he disobeys, the guards come in and beat him and another man. The other man is beaten much worse. It's uncertain for some time whether the man will live, but the man does live.

He understands: this is how you break a person.

He tries to kill the guard who beat the man the hardest. They hold him down and beat him and beat another man. The second man dies the next night.

He understands: this is like the child.

The men don't approach him or speak to him. The men watch him without looking at him. He gets away from them, as far as he can without digging into the wall. He curls up and doesn't move until the guards come back. He doesn't fight them when they pick him up and move his limbs. They dress him like a doll. His left cuff hangs gaping.

His shirt says, in little black stitches: _Subjekt Eins_. The other men don't have numbers.

This isn't a privilege.

It is, apparently, a responsibility.

 

☙

 

The subject is told: compliance will be rewarded. He doesn't fight. He doesn't try to kill the guards. He doesn't try to kill himself. He wants to know what it might be, the reward: whether it might help him understand, whether he can trade it for favors, whether it can make him stronger. Right now, he's too weak.

They put him to sleep. He wakes with a limb of shining metal bolted to his stump. His elbow becomes steel. His wrist, mercury. Holes they've bored into his bones to hold it there, aching. He bares his teeth like a dog, like a rabid thing, like a bat he saw convulsing in the corner of the room he shares with the men, snapping at the air, dying. The numberless men aren't here, in this room. They can't be used against him. He bares his teeth.

Eight people die before the anesthetic brings him down.

 

☙

 

They install a new arm. His body rejects it. Infection is a matter of course; the fevers, spiking higher and higher. His abandoned arm has a vengeful spirit. Any tampering with what he has left, and his blood tries to boil in his skull. They beat him as though it's his fault. He laughs and clenches his silver fist.

They say: why won't you cooperate? Compliance will be rewarded.

Who am I? he says. Fuck you.

They look at each other.

Perhaps it's time, one of them says.

Maybe, one of them says.

He's been asking, one of them says.

Amerika, one of them says.

Zola, one of them says.

He doesn't know the name, but something seizes in his chest: like a heart attack.

 

☙

 

A silver coffin. Like a bullet, or a tube of—like a—

Like something he's forgotten.

They put him inside of it and lock the door. He thinks they're going to bury him alive, until the ice comes. His limbs turn to stone. His pulse slows to hard sickly thumps in his throat. His brain is the last thing to shut down, which they know. They must know. They must have planned it this way. They've given him a window to look through while it happens.

He freezes to death. He wakes up somewhere else.

 

###### 19??

The room is small. They're crowded together: the subject and the men who have been brought with him. They smell like sweat and fear and illness, too hot in the airless space. None of them try to remove their uniforms. Little black stitches on the left breast. Some of the numberless men are numberless no more. _We lucky few_ , one of them says. Proximity's made them bold. Nobody tries to avoid touching the subject. Or: it would be a waste of energy.

They haven't been given water since the door closed. Like sand moving over sand, Subjekt Drei whispers, “ _D'où êtes-vous?_ ”

“Idaho,” says Subjekt Vier.

“Bristol,” says Subjekt Acht.

“Stuttgart,” says Subjekt Zwei.

“No fuckin' clue,” the subject says.

“Ah, yes, who knows really where one is from.” Subject Neun has the thickest accent. Some of the men nod. “The war, the borders—it is all shit. Lines on maps.” He spits on his own bare foot.

The subject thinks: what war?

“Hear hear,” says Subjekt Acht.

“You ever hear the joke about the old lady from Warsaw?” Subject Vier asks. “Her son comes rushing in and says, Ma, Ma, the Poles have taken back the city! _Oh thank god_ , the old lady says, _I couldn't stand another Russian winter._ ”

Some of the men laugh. Some of them smile. Some of them start out laughing and end up coughing.

The subject doesn't laugh. He doesn't get it.

 

☙

 

A small round face. Two small round lenses, reflecting light.

Unreasoning terror.

He fights until they beat the fight out of him, and then he fights them again. They strap him down and force needles into the ditch of his elbow. Something dark burning up his arm, sitting like tar in his chest, drawing dark curtains over his eyes. He's—

A gap.

When the blackness clears, the lights are smeary, too bright. He's lost something. He's lost time. Though unable to recall the shape of the room he was in before, he'd swear things have been moved. Some instinct, some lingering uncanniness. A doctor leans over him, lenses flashing. The doctor smiles.

The subject feels as though he should be afraid. He can't, for several days, remember why.

 

☙

 

 _Amerika_ , the doctor says. He cocks his head like a sparrow, and then he shakes it. _No, I suppose you would not know of it_.

The subject bleeds on the table and doesn't care. When the pain becomes worse, he begs. It changes nothing. They return him to the room, and he goes into the darkest corner. When he finds a knife-sharp pebble by laying down on it, he thinks about cutting his skin. It might make the doctor angry. He looks at the incisions the doctor made; they're almost gone. Faint pink lines. He uses the stone to write on the wall instead: _I heal very fast._

 

☙

 

All of them are injected with a large needle, and everyone but the subject heals within a day. When his body rejects it, pushing out jagged metal through inflamed skin, they all see what was put into them. They don't know what it is.

“Looks like vacuum tubes for dolls,” says Subjekt Vier.

Subjekt Zwei says, “I knew a, how do you say? _Physiker_. Who is working on integrated electronic circuits. Like this, but—large.”

“It's too fuckin' _small_ ,” says Subjekt Vier.

“Might they be trying to control us?” Subjekt Acht suggests. “Turn us into—oh, I don't bloody know. Don't laugh. Robots?”

Nobody looks at the subject. Nobody mentions his arm.

“They were aiming for that, they shoulda stuck needles in our brains,” says Subjekt Vier.

“Don't give them ideas,” says Subjekt Fünf.

The subject rejects another three circuits. They strap him to the table and drill cores in his bones. Machinery shrieking. The smell of burning carbon. The men tell him later that he writhes with infection for two days, his joints swelling and turning red, his sweat like nothing they've ever smelled, sour and sweet by turns like rotting meat. He can't walk until the swelling goes down.

Subjekt Fünf is taken away and comes back beaten. Bruises on his face and hands and belly, a crust of blood around his nostrils. He's bitten through his cheek and slurs when he talks.

“I got loose and made a break for it,” Subjekt Fünf whispers. “Hid in a bin in a supply cupboard. Only a couple minutes before they found me—the tall one had a thing like a radio. It beeped the closer he got to me.” He spits blood and holds a hand to his ribs. “They're trackers, pals. I think we're giving off radar signals.”

“Fuck a duck,” says Subjekt Acht.

The subject scratches onto his skin, and then onto the wall: _They can find us if we run_. On his skin it disappears. On the wall it remains.

 

☙

 

The men are given paper and pencils. The guards tell them in several languages to write letters to their families. The subject doesn't know what to write—where his family is, if he even has one. Doesn't know who to address it to. He makes a messy sketch of one of the guards instead, the one who has interesting features, with his high sharp cheekbones and a jaw that seems too large for his face.

“That's really quite good,” says Subject Acht, leaning over his shoulder. “Were you an artist?”

“Dunno,” the subject says. No, he wasn't, or maybe, but: someone else was. Someone loved him. Someone thought he was—

“Don't know much, do you, champ?” says Subjekt Fünf.

The subject shrugs.

“Aw, let him alone,” says Subjekt Vier. “Hell, he might have a little girl at home, same as you. Only way you're gettin' outta here to see her again is if we all stick together, you keen?”

“Think I had a sister,” the subject says, before Subjekt Fünf can get angry. He doesn't think it until he says it, feels like he's making it up, but it doesn't lay heavy in his mouth like a lie. Maybe he did have a sister. Surely many people do.

“See?” says Subjekt Vier. He claps the subject on his right shoulder. “We'll get you home to Sis. You'll see. Hey, d'you think you could draw my ugly mug next?”

 

☙

 

Subjekt Vier is taken. He's returned the next day with thick bandages wrapped around his face, swaggering blind into the room like he has no fear. When the door slams shut he drops to his knees. The men cluster around him and pat him on the shoulders. They murmur comfortingly. Subjekt Sieben and his steady hands, unwinding the bandages, removing the lumps of gauze. Subjekt Vier squints and blinks and shakes his head. His once-brown eyes are webbed with blood and yellow as a cat's. The pupils aren't right. He doesn't match the drawing anymore.

“I don't think this is any regular kinda POW camp, fellas,” he says. His voice is very weak.

The subject crawls back into the corner and works on pulling out his thumbnail with his teeth. He could have told them that, if anyone had asked.

 

☙

 

Subjekt Acht is returned with stitches in his neck and ugly shapes under his skin. He can't speak. He borrows the subject's sharp stone to write on the wall: _They put metal in my throat_.

Subjekt Drei is returned wrapped in six thick blankets. His skin is raw-red and he can't stop shaking for several hours. He tells them he was put into a vat of ice, and then under a hot lamp, and then back into the ice, over and over. Three of his teeth are cracked from chattering.

Subjekt Neun is returned with someone else's hand at the end of his right wrist. The skin of the hand doesn't match the skin of his arm. He can't control it, but it twitches on its own. It hangs limply unless he holds it against his stomach. He gags, sometimes, when it moves.

The subject only sees the hand later. He's in a small dark room when Subjekt Neun is returned, picking up marbles with his metal fingers and tossing them into cups. If he misses a cup, he receives a small electric shock. If he drops a marble, he receives a small electric shock. If he attempts to attack the observer, he receives a large electric shock. When they return him, sedated, the skin where the electrodes clung is blackened and burned. He counts the minutes it takes them to heal and disappear. See: he can do science too.

 

☙

 

Sometimes he thinks there's too many men. Sometimes he thinks there's too few. Sometimes he's alone. Sometimes he's surprised to wake up and find the men nearby. Sometimes he's frightened and other times he's violent. The men have learned to talk him down. He knows this because they're too patient. They're not afraid of him. They make up kind stories about his sister. He doesn't have a sister. Does he?

Subjekt Acht becomes ill. The only noise he makes is the rattle of the thing in his throat. He vomits blood that night and dies. The subject holds the back of his hand in front of the man's nose before they take the body away: there's no air. The next day, Subjekt Acht is brought back into the room alive. Mute and smiling. The guards have given him small candies, one for every subject in the room. He offers them around, cupped in hairless too-clean hands.

The subject takes one with his dirt-black fingers. He worries what'll happen if he refuses a dead man's tokens.

He records it on his skin. He records it on the wall.

Subjekt Sieben is taken away for a blood sample. At dawn he strangles Subjekt Fünf. He screams while he does it. They try to tear them apart but Subjekt Sieben's fingers are locked bone-hard. White knuckles and broken blood vessels. His steady hands. He goes quiet when it's over but doesn't move from where he crouches over Subject Fünf's body. He's quiet when the guards take him away. He's quiet when they bring him back. He seizes three days later, pink froth over all his face like a caul, torquing his spine until it breaks.

Subjekt Zehn's brain swells in his skull. It's slow. The guards shoot him because he makes a terrible keening noise.

Subjekt Drei bleeds under his skin until he turns black and gangrenous. His skin splits and oozes terrible fluids.

Subjekt Zwei is suddenly ravenous. They give him half their food but it's not enough. He withers to bones. He starves to death.

Subjekt Acht's skin peels off in strips. His teeth fall out. His mouth is full of sores. He tells them: don't come near me.

Subjekt Vier can't shake his pneumonia.

Subjekt Neun's fever doesn't break.

Subjekt Sechs beats himself to death on the wall.

The subject scratches all of them down in the corner. In the shadows, his sharp dark stone.

 

☙

 

The subject tries to kill himself.

He wakes up.

 

☙

 

The subject tries to kill himself.

He wakes up.

 

☙

 

The subject tries to kill himself.

He wakes up.

 

☙

 

Laying on the table. His body is on the table but he is not.

Laying on the table. Laying on the roof. Sky so clear and blue it's almost translucent, Christ, would you look at that, pal, blue just like—just like—

Sky somewhere else. Sky in his head. Hissing as he drops a cigarette onto his naked chest, rolling over, swatting at ashes, cursing a streak as blue as—scraping his hands on tar paper, scuffling. Someone laughing. A man laughing. Not him. And then: him laughing too. Eyes. Someone else's lizard-skin bruised-up elbow, sun on his back, grit under his fingers. Warm. No sound but the sound of them laughing.

Somewhere, far away, pain.

When they take him back to the room, someone has painted over all of the walls.

 

###### 19??

“I disliked anatomy in medical school,” the doctor is saying. The subject doesn't turn his head, even when metal clatters ominously against metal next to his right ear. The subject attempted to convey interest, earlier, and the doctor was less gentle. The subject is meant to hear but not to listen. An instrument smacks cold against the subject's earlobe before it digs in behind his jaw. He clamps his teeth together and swallows compulsively so he won't make a noise.

“Even at _Medizinische Universität Wien_ , it was undignified,” the doctor continues. His thick accent slurs his T's into Z's. If the subject closes his eyes, pretends the doctor isn't attached, it's a soothing voice, musical, low. “So much limp gray flesh, so many opportunities for rude jokes by young men who thought themselves very funny. Blood and fluids and stuffy little rooms. You can imagine it was not pleasant. I felt always—what is the word? Nauseous. No, nauseated. English is an eccentric language; so particular. I felt always nauseated. But in those days we needed doctors very badly in Europe. A decade after _Erster Weltkrieg_ and still there were so many people dying. Men with rotting lungs and rotting legs...hysteria...venereal disease. Some the influenza took and never left. Death would have been better for many of them. So futile, the fighting for land and not for idealism—so futile. There was no _Zeitgeist_. Little children grabbing more sweets than they can eat. So much _waste_.”

A wet noise and a sudden sharper pain; the subject bites his tongue to pulp. Warm liquid, rolling down his neck and settling against his spine, against the table, cooling and itching. Salt water to rinse the canvas. The doctor sniffs and returns to his work. “With the broken men I discovered a certain talent for, ah, detachment. I was an engineering student first, when I still was very selfish. I excelled at machines, but I did not function well in that environment. I found it insufficiently academic and a waste of my talent. Little did I know. I believe it was in those broken men that first I realized how like a machine the human being is. One may open it up and see all of its parts moving. One may break it and put it back together stronger than before. One may even help it cheat death. It was,” the doctor whispers, “A revelation.”

“Ain't you swell,” the subject slurs. Blood or saliva or both trickles from the corner of his mouth. He sneers to make it worse.

The doctor glares, his lips pressed thin and bullfrog-wide. “Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear at the outset. You will cease talking.”

“Make me,” the subject says.

 

☙

 

The subject is screaming.

He produces no noise. The doctor's done something to his spine, up where it slots into his skull, and he can't move. But he can see, and he can think, and he can feel. The doctor has opened him up, spread his torso wide like butterfly wings, flayed it off his ribs. He's a corpse on an autopsy table. He can feel the peeled-back skin resting slack and warm on his right arm, knows it must be the same on the other side, but he can't feel it. He's being punished. The only thing this can be is a punishment. He doesn't know why he's being punished. He doesn't know why he's not dead.

The doctor uses a scalpel to gesture inside the subject's body. On the subject's right side are two men, one moderately young and one middle-aged. On his left stands the doctor and a very young woman, no more than a girl, shoulders willow-sharp under her lab coat. Her dark hair is slicked viciously back from her face. The younger man looks disturbed; the older one fascinated; the girl, bored.

“And look here,” the doctor says in English. A dull scrape on the subject's sternum. He cuts something, from the sound. “Observe. You see?”

“Remarkable,” says the older man. The younger man looks ill. The girl leans closer.

“This could have had enormous implications for the treatment of certain cancers,” the doctor says.

“Why hasn't it?” the older man asks.

“Alas, I have been unable to successfully replicate the effects of my serum on another host,” says the doctor. “But we must not mourn for what might have been. There may yet be answers. Art in the blood, etcetera.”

“Is liable to take the strangest forms.” The younger man, sounding relieved. “You don't peg me as a mystery fan, Doctor.”

“Oh, well,” the doctor says, and when the subject opens his eyes, the girl is looking at him.

“He is awake,” she says. Her voice is flat as paper.

“Yes, he is only paralyzed,” says the doctor. “I find complete anesthesia arrests many bodily functions best observed in vivo. Look—see? He is distressed. Watch the superior mesenteric aorta.”

“May I speak to him?” the girl asks. Without waiting for the doctor's approval, she says, “Are you able to hear me?”

The subject blinks his eyes twice.

“Are you able to move any part of your body below your neck?”

He stares until his eyes water.

“Are you in any pain?”

He blinks rapidly, as fast as he can, hoping without energy that she'll understand, that she'll be appalled, that she'll tell him why he's being wrenched open, that she'll put him out of his fucking misery—

“Interesting,” says the girl, and puts her small hand inside his belly.

 

☙

 

The subject is strapped to a table. White walls; bright light. Nothing else. Across the room, men in white coats stand murmuring. Doctors. Is he ill? A young man is inserting a needle into the subject's right arm. The procedure hurts a lot more than he thinks it should, given the size of the needle. He's gone through far worse—has he? He hasn't. He's dreaming. White walls. Bright light.

One of the doctors brings the other doctors over. When the subject sees his white coat, his small round glasses, something deep within him goes cold and fluttery. Shock of sensation flooding out from the chest. He's afraid. Why? The man is small and soft. He has kind-looking hands.

The other men, the subject sees, aren't doctors. They wear military uniforms under their white coats. He feels confused, and then angry, and then confused at his anger.

“You may release the straps,” the doctor says. As the young man moves around the table, the doctor says to the men, “Due to the enhanced physiology in question, it was a particular challenge to synthesize an effective paralysis-inducing drug that would not be effected by electroconvulsive shock. Much trial and error was required. But, as you can see, we have produced intravenous restraint without sedation. At a lower dosage it proves sufficient for your general usage, and it is much more cost-effective.”

“Your government pals won't like that,” one of the men says.

“Ach,” says the doctor, like he's going to spit. He cuts one hand through the air. “ _Politicians_. They ask me for worse things than this.”

The subject turns his head to the side to see the men better. One of them jumps. “Uh, are you certain—”

“Yes, yes,” the doctor says. “We have learned, if paralysis continues too far above the neck, we see, ah...deleterious effects on the central nervous system. Which, of course, you gentlemen are wanting to avoid.”

The subject thinks the doctor's lying. He can feel the sheet over his lower body, can curl his toes carefully beneath it, can flex invisibly the muscles of his calves. The doctor's trying to swindle the men. His arm hurts. Should he say something? Should he beg for help?

The subject waits.

“If you will allow me to demonstrate,” the doctor says, and walks around to the subject's other side. There's the sound of metal, of something rolling across the floor. The subject turns his head and looks at the ceiling so that more of the room falls into his peripheral vision. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a row of surgical tools on a white cloth. The doctor leans over and touches them with his soft hands.

“Ugly bastard, isn't he?” says one of the men. Someone laughs.

“We are having administrative difficulties,” the doctor says sadly. “He is aggressive and dangerous when confused. His guards are too liberal with their fists. They should instead be more careful when cleaning his cell. Does not the bear attack when the hunter enters its cave?”

“Hell, squirrels attack if you get 'em cornered.” More laughter.

“Hey, Doc, there's a lump on his arm. Your boy might've missed the vein over here.”

“You ever want to see a grown man scream, just wait 'till you see—”

The subject lunges for the nearest throat.

His left arm is silver and beautiful. And strong, he discovers, when the man's face crumples under the force of it, caving in hollow, gunshot cracks. The needle yanks itself out of his skin, burning where it spills, but he's already in motion. His metal hand can cave in bellies, too, and his metal elbow can break ribs, and his metal fingers can tear off ears. He becomes aware of his own snarling when he stops. There is screaming, and then there isn't. The heady wail of multiple desynchronous alarms.

He knows there are places to hide. Someone told him once that there were places large enough for a body, upstairs. Someone also told him: _they can find you if you hide_. Or maybe he was the one who said it. He can hear stone scratching on stone and shrieks to drown it out. It's not real. The sound he makes is the sound of the alarms. He runs.

The corridors are empty of people. He's prepared to tear through anyone who appears, but no one does. The wailing grows louder; softer. He passes one siren after another in the halls. Boots stamping behind him and he runs faster, he can run faster than them, he's made of metal and they can't catch him, he'll rip out his own throat before he'll let them lay their hands on his iron bones. He runs until there's only a door between him and the light. There's no door and the light is blinding; he holds his arms in front of his face and runs anyway, wet on his feet, wet on his face, the world made of light.

Below his arms he sees the edge and stops just barely in time. His feet slipping wet on the grass. His arms in circles. He looks up. He sees—light. And then water. Water. Water.

It rolls down his spine to ring in the bell of his hips, upsetting an already precarious balance. He strikes out with his left foot to stop himself from falling down into the blue. Blue above. Blue below. Blue to every horizon. It steals the breath from his chest like a punch. He doesn't remember and then he does. The word for what it is.

The ocean as far as his eyes can see.

He hears them come up behind him. There is a clatter and the doctor shouts: “ _Nien_! Stop!” He knows without looking that there are eight guns pointed at his head. He expects to be shot but no one shoots him. The subject looks out at the blue and tries to breathe. He thinks: if he jumps they'll catch him. If he swims they'll track him. If he hides they'll retrieve him. If he drowns they'll bring him back to life.

He's naked, he realizes. Sweat-slicked and filthy, bloodied head-to-toe, worse things on the soles of his feet. The cleanness of the wind coming off the water makes him feel dirty and ashamed. Shame is a new feeling. He lets it grow within him. Three long breaths of salt-sharp air.

“Will you come back inside?” the doctor asks gently.

“Yes,” the subject says.

He walks back inside the facility. Four guards on his left side and on his right. The doctor behind him. Just before he reaches the door, he turns for one last look at the ocean and the sky. It reminds him of something.

 

☙

 

The door opens. Closes. The subject is curled up small on the concrete floor, the metal arm between him and the cold, and doesn't lift his head to look. He's picking holes in his wrist to watch them heal.

“That?” someone says. “ _That_ took out six officers and a technician?”

“I know he does not look impressive on the surface,” the doctor says, “But my serum runs through him. He possesses a sort of, ah, idiot strength, as a side effect—he does not seem to understand his body. He is capable of surviving wounds that would destroy you or I.”

“Huh,” the man says. “Useful. Cooperative?”

“Ah,” says the doctor, and the man grunts.

“Figures.” Clicking of fingers. “Hey, you. What did you say his designation was? Eins. Subject. Hey, shake a leg, Slim. There's a reward in it for you if you get this right.”

The subject uncurls.

They use small words to explain it to him, like he's damaged, but he understands it like this: the officer is able to give power. He can order the doctor to take away the subject's arm and reattach it. He can tell someone to paralyze the subject and return to him his limbs. He can ask for the subject's sight to be removed and restored again. If the subject cooperates, he's allowed to keep his body. If he cooperates, the guards aren't allowed to touch him, or move him, or beat him. The subject prefers to cooperate. It doesn't seem difficult.

They bring a blindfolded man into the room and put a gun in the subject's hand. The subject wants to cooperate, but he doesn't want to shoot the man. In his mind he sees a child, a wire, a bullet between clear gray eyes. He's a statue in the middle of the room. He doesn't want to lower his arm and be punished. He doesn't want to shoot the man.

They shock him with cattle prods when he turns the gun on his own head. The officer shoots the man as the subject crumples to the floor. A great clap of sound in the little room. His ears ring.

“Always you must be so _difficult_ ,” says the doctor.

The silver tube.

 

☙

 

He opens his eyes. His head hurts viciously, a sick too-fast drumbeat between his ears, under his jaw. When he swallows he swallows blood, and chokes. Above him there's an open helmet, studded on the inside with blue lights. The lights fade as he watches them. In his peripheral vision he can see people moving around the room purposefully, working with their hands. No one speaks and the walls are white. He wonders if he's in a hospital.

“Where am I?” he asks.

A man comes up to the table. He's wearing a starched uniform and looks very stern. Gentler, when he smiles.

“You're safe,” the man says. “What do you remember?”

The subject blinks at the man. Closes his eyes. Opens them.

“Nothing,” he says.

 

☙

 

Boys dressed in the rags of unwashed uniforms, some privileged few their boots, a shred of dignity. Skeletons in their dark rags. They starve them and wonder why they die in droves. The cage next to his contains one living man and seven dead. They haven't come collecting in days. The smell is a charnel smell, seeping into the dirt. The sound of flies is deafening and the floor is a writhing mat of white. The guards will kill the living man to save on time. The living man realizes, soon enough. Lays on the writhing floor and curls up to their teeth and their bones. Black limbs, white—

He smells smoke.

He comes off the table screaming, convulsing, clawing at the air, clawing at nothing as white-jacketed men stumble back. He rolls to the floor and crawls to the darkest corner of the room, upsetting machinery and carts on his way. The wall to his back and a syringe in his hand. He swipes it unsteadily at the small man who approaches, hands in the air. A man in uniform crosses his arms and frowns.

“Zola,” the subject says, and gags.

The doctor sighs.

“Lower the thresholds and increase the voltage,” he says.

 

☙

 

He opens his eyes. His head aches, a nauseating pound in his temples. There's a man standing beside him. Another man is leaning over him, making adjustments to something above his head. White light glints off his glasses. White coat, white room.

“You've been very sick,” the man beside him says. “Do you remember?”

“No,” the subject says. He remembers smoke, and—something he doesn't want to think about. Something bad. Something bad must've happened to him.

“Am I gonna be okay?” he asks.

The man in the glasses reaches out to touch him and his body flinches. He stops breathing.

“You're on your way there,” the man says.

He closes his eyes.

 

☙

 

He opens his eyes. His head hurts.

“What do you remember?”

Smoke.

 

☙

 

There is a cage.

He screams in fear and then after in pain.

 

☙

 

There is a cage. He flinches.

A man, sighing.

 

☙

 

There is a cage.

A girl is holding the subject's right arm and inserting a needle into the muscle. Her dark hair has been slicked back from her face and tucked into a bun. He looks for stray hairs and doesn't find any. Somewhere far away there's a cacophony of noise. His arm burns, and then feels cold, and then all of him feels cold. As he watches the girl disassemble the syringe's parts and dispose of her gloves with efficient, practiced movements, he realizes, in slow fragments, that a mist is clearing from the world. The shapes around him become sharper—he can finish whole thoughts. They were drugging him, he thinks, astonished. He's been awake for a long time, drifting unaware. He sits up straighter.

On the other side of the room is a large metal structure, the kind of thing that might be used for penning livestock. Now it pens humans. About four dozen men surround the cage, shouting and cheering and rattling the bars with their hands, and inside the cage are two more men, slick-skinned under bright lights, dodging and striking at one another. A fight. The objective appears to involve knocking your opponent to the ground and pinning him there. The man who wins puts his hands into the air, opening wide his mouth and bellowing at the ceiling, although the subject can't hear him over the roar of the crowd. The winner shakes his opponent's hand, and another man enters the cage, and the process begins again. The subject watches, fascinated. A foreignness is buzzing under his skin like electricity. He wants to _move_.

“Is he ready?”

The voices are too loud, too close. The subject suppresses a flinch by luck alone; his skin feels stretched-taut and oversensitive. The men coming up on his left side are as different as night and day. The one in uniform tall, dark, all sharp corners; the one with the glasses short, colorless, soft-edged.

The girl grabs the subject's wrist, waits several seconds, and says, “Yes.”

“Okay, Moe, let's get this shit-show on the road.” The officer grabs his metal elbow and steers him towards the cage. The subject doesn't resist. Shouting turns to jeering as they approach, but the men part for them, and the officer walks the subject to the cage's gate. Inside, one man has the other in a bear hug around the waist, ignoring punches to his head and shoulders. He spins them both around and trips his opponent with a hook of the knee. The opponent recovers and crab-scuttles away.

“You getting this?” the officer asks.

“Pin your opponent,” the subject says.

“Good lad. Don't kill anyone. Don't break bones if you can help it.”

“Yes, sir,” the subject says, and the officer claps him on the shoulder. A ring on the officer's hand clanking off his metal scapula. When the larger fighter finally manages to pin his squirmy opponent, the subject is pushed into the cage. Already beginning to walk in on his own, he stumbles, and laughter roars from the other side of the bars. His opponent spits blood at the subject's feet; the nimble man managed to split his lip. There's no signal before the man comes rushing at him fists first, avoiding the metal arm, focusing on the subject's right side. Smart, the subject has time to observe, before he's on the ground. He expects to be taken from the ring, but his opponent switches out for another man. The second one pins him too: the subject's arms feel weak, his legs unbalanced, like he's been ill for a long time and is only just relearning his limbs.

By the fourth man, he understands.

He's faster than his opponents. More flexible. He observes their mistakes and corrects his own before they occur. Their strikes fall on him unhurting and his stagger them back, they sweat while he moves to chase the cold from his bones, they pant and they suffer when he drives the air from their lungs. They come at him in pairs once it becomes clear he won't be defeated by a single man; he dazes one with an elbow while he pins the other in the sweat and the dirt. He's more than a body on a table. He's _strong_. He snarls at the bars when no more men will come in to fight him. He roars and jumps towards the shouting crowd. They stumble back from the cage. Something about it hurts deep in his chest, bone-aching and twisted, but the sound that comes out of him is laughter: a half-hysterical ratchety thing, unhinged and terrible in his own ears. He wants to weep. He wants to tear them apart. He wants to clutch his head and find the darkest corner to hide in. He can't stop _laughing_.

“Well,” says the officer to the man in the glasses, “I think that answers that.”

 

###### 19??

Run. Hit the wall. Climb, hand over hand. Twist in the fall. Come down knife first.

“Again,” the officer says.

Run. Hit the wall. Climb, hand over hand. Twist in the fall. Come down knife first.

“Again.”

“This is a waste of time,” says the doctor. “He will not remember doing any of it.”

“You've been getting behind on your reading, doc,” says the officer. “Some big-shot in Florida's been doing studies on short-term amnesiacs. Even if they can't remember doing it, they get better at repetitive tasks over time. Muscle memory—or some part of the brain, shit, I'm no medico, you'd have to explain it with some kinda catchy jingle. That's the salient part, anyway. Hey, Charles Atlas! Again! What, do I have to tell you everything?”

Run. Hit the wall. Climb, hand over hand. Twist in the fall. Come down knife first.

 

☙

 

“Kill him,” the officer says.

The subject says: “Why?”

 

☙

 

“Kill him,” the officer says.

The subject makes a mess.

 

☙

 

“Kill him cleanly,” the officer says. “Good! Good lad.”

 

☙

 

A helicopter takes him to the mainland. The subject didn't know the facility was on an island. He remembers: blue. He stops remembering. The guards keep their guns trained on his head.

On the mainland he's sent alone to wait for a target. He doesn't remember being alone. He doesn't remember being with people, either, but he's nervous alone, so he must've been. He touches all his knives and the gun they've given him. His throat, his jaw. He rubs his skin raw next to his nose. It heals. He does it again. Before the helicopter, the officer said: clean. The blood looks sloppy in the grooves of his metal fingers and the subject almost misses his target while he's trying to scrub them out.

The officer said: clean. The subject doesn't use the gun.

 

☙

 

A lobotomy renders the subject calm and malleable, even cheerful, for approximately 70 hours. The doctor is delighted. It is much less fuss, the doctor says to a technician, and cheaper. A girl in a lab coat pulls her dark hair away from her face and performs the procedure once every three days, the rod tap-tap-tapping into the subject's skull. The subject develops a tentative, childlike understanding of time: hours pass in order, and numbers are meaningful, and there are days that are different from other days. He stops squirming away from the doctor's fingers. He watches, curious, as the doctor systematically breaks and sets all the little bones in his right hand. He copies the doctor when the doctor is gone.

But, they discover, he can't load a gun. Knives fumble from his right hand; the left one spasms oddly, or hangs lifeless. He has trouble remembering instructions given to him only minutes earlier. He can't complete a task unless someone is at his side, prompting him towards the next objective. He can't take initiative. He can't be left alone on a mission. He can't kill a mouse.

The rod disappears, and the helmet returns.

 

☙

 

The subject kills a family of five. They have willow trees in their yard and wooden ducks on their walls. When he leaves, the dog is ears-deep in the father's abdomen, chewing.

 

☙

 

They put a wide metal ring above him that hisses and sparks. A great achievement, they say amongst themselves, congratulatory. A vast improvement on the helmet, they say. We will make history here today. The subject doesn't remember a helmet, but the dish makes him bleed out of his ears, his nose—his mouth, where he bites off the tip of his tongue. They push needles under his skin and try again.

The subject kills a woman who begs in a musical language. He doesn't understand it, but he can speak it. He asks the woman to be quiet. Blood still flaking on his cheekbones. Copper on his tongue. His ears ring for twelve hours.

They get it right the next time.

 

☙

 

The subject is burned in a terrible explosion. The result, when he sees himself in a plate glass window, more closely resembles pork crackling than a human body. The arm is a melted club of slag, hanging from him like a stalactite. They make him walk to the medical wing because he can. He leaves gummy plasma footprints down three separate halls. The doctor makes extensive notes over the ten days it takes him to heal, and the subject has never seen a man so happy, especially when the subject's pink new skin grows enthusiastically into the metal cap of his shoulder, requiring extensive surgery.

The subject's happy too, in his own way. The doctor uses anesthesia for the whole procedure. His new arm is silver, and beautiful, and strong.

 

☙

 

A man begs. He offers the subject money, women, cars, power, prestige, on his knees with his face wet and his hands scraped raw. The subject is upset about the blood. He didn't mean to make the man fall down. Sloppy. The man's fingers clutch the subject's trousers, smearing red, popping the seams. “I'll give you anything,” the man sobs. “What do you _want_?”

“I don't understand the question,” the subject says.

 

☙

 

They put him in a tank with four soldiers. No one tells him where he is or where he's going. The soldiers joke in a language he almost recognizes. In the tank, everyone sweats except the subject, the stink of petrol seeping into their clothes, their hair, the beds of their nails. One of the soldiers has a small lizard he's trained to sleep in his pocket. Every so often, it pokes its blunt head out of the flap and peers around.

When the subject climbs out of the tank, everything is on fire. Ash in the air, ash on the tongue. The sky reminds him of a color he's certain he's never seen: gangrene black and mottled red. He thinks, for no reason, of an arm crushed beneath a stone. The subject and the soldiers take their guns and move through the town. They shoot anyone they see. They leave the bodies for the ravens.

After, the subject crawls through a half-burned clearing, on his hands and knees like a stalking cat. He comes back to the soldiers with his hands full of crickets. The soldier with the lizard laughs and drops one into his pocket. They all listen for the tiny crunches. The lizard pokes its head out and licks its eyeballs, satisfied, looking for more. The soldiers laugh. The subject doesn't remember how to laugh, but he does remember how to smile.

 

☙

 

They wake him up and he wonders why his hair smells like gasoline.

He thinks: there was a lizard.

 

☙

 

“Lift it above your head,” the officer says, and the doctor shouts: “Stop!”

The subject freezes, caught between orders. He doesn't know what to do. His heart rabbit-fast. The metal arm curls towards his belly.

“He can do it, can't he?” says the officer.

“That is beside the point,” the doctor says. “It will damage him internally. Microfractures, intra-muscular fissures, internal bleeding—”

“I thought that's what your wonder drug was for.”

“I am beginning to doubt its limits,” says the doctor. “He is a test model. I did not build him for feats of strength. He was not meant to be this—weapon! You must not use him too liberally.”

“Just following orders, Doc,” says the officer.

The subject lifts the concrete block. It hurts. He puts it down. The officer claps him on the back before he leaves.

“Just following orders,” the doctor echoes, when they're alone. He draws blood from the subject's elbow. “For this we tore the world apart. Some boys will do anything if someone with medals tells them it's right. And still it is not enough—still the hydra is hungry. It can be done without violence, if only they _think_! But do they think, Americans? Never. It is too easy to—pfft. Shoot it if it's trouble.” The doctor takes off his glasses and polishes them with his cuffs. “I should have taken my chances with Schmidt.”

 

☙

 

They shoot him full of drugs that make him confused and aggressive. They say: this is a test. They push him out of a plane without a parachute. Somewhere in Russia, he thinks; the pilot of the plane is Russian. He lands in a forest on the side of a mountain and walks for an hour on a broken leg. When he finds a tent half-covered in snow, dark, abandoned, he crawls inside.

It's not abandoned.

They find him the next morning. He's sunburnt and delirious. He's crawled a long way from the bodies. When they pry his frozen hands apart, they find a human tongue.

 

☙

 

“I believe this is what you call _irony_ ,” says the doctor.

The officer won't stop screaming. The subject puts his fingers in his ears.

 

☙

 

“I understand it killed my predecessor,” the officer says.

The doctor shrugs. “I am afraid he ignored the warnings.” And then: “ _Hör damit auf_!”

The subject jerks his head up. His mouth bloody. Half his fingernail between his teeth.

“It doesn't look very dangerous,” the officer says. He doesn't look right. There's something wrong about him. He's a different man, the subject realizes. There was another one.

“Looks can be deceiving,” says the doctor.

 

☙

 

There was supposed to be an officer.

 

###### 19??

The subject glances right and thinks, _Zola's lost weight_.

He freezes. In a place more feeling than words, a nameless fear rises up in him, a certainty: he shouldn't remember this. He shouldn't remember. The technician working on his arm freezes too, both hands hovering over the metal, still as a deer in a field, liable to bolt. The subject thinks the wrath of god will come down on his head, but no one else in the room notices. The doctor—Zola?—continues to look up at the x-rays on the wall, and the woman next to him taps a rib with two fingers. Her lab coat hangs spare on her tiny bones. Her dark hair pulled tight over her skull.

“Hey,” the technician says quietly, nervously. “Everything's fine. You're safe.”

“Yes,” the subject says, and makes his muscles go slack.

 

###### 196?

The subject tests a theory.

Zola has the subject's right forearm paralyzed and positioned on a movable table, his small soft hand holding it steady while he makes incisions. The incisions range from tiny nicks to three-inch slices. Zola removes his hand from the subject's arm to pick up a stopwatch. He glances from the arm to the stopwatch and takes notes on the clipboard balanced on his knee.

“You've done that before,” the subject says, and Zola drops the stopwatch. The subject relishes the half-second of fear in Zola's eyes. He says again: “You've done that before.”

“I am testing the efficacy of my serum over time,” Zola says. His composure appears to be regained. He adjusts his glasses and picks the stopwatch up off the floor. The subject realizes, slowly, as though he's crawling through mud to get to it, that Zola's always said it that way. Not _the_ serum. _My_ serum. As though there's more than one.

“You want to know if it's as strong as before.” It comes out mushy; he's not accustomed to speaking. “If _I'm_ as strong as before.”

“That is correct,” Zola says. He gestures at someone the subject can't see. “I have reason to be concerned.”

“I know a test you could run,” the subject says.

“Yes?”

“You could try to kill me,” the subject says.

They drag him straight to the chair.

After, he sees uncertainty in the lines around Zola's eyes and knows, dazed and gleeful, that he was the one to put it there.

 

###### 196?

“This is absurd!” Zola shouts. His accent, the subject notes, has faded over the years, but it still gets stronger when he raises his voice. _Zees ees obsurd!_ The subject scratches his cheek until it bleeds. He watches Zola pace.

“Take it upstairs,” the new officer says. “HQ isn't happy about the amount of time he spends recovering from your procedures. They want him active, and they want him mission-ready within twelve hours at all times.”

“Impossible!” Two techs appear at the door, think better of it, and scurry. “My experiments are crucial, absolutely crucial. You do not understand. He is not built for this.”

“I understand well enough,” the officer says. He opens a folder. The subject isn't able to see the contents from the chair. Slickness under his nails. “You've driven off or bullied into submission anyone who tries to undermine your authority. Everyone HQ has sent over the last—seven years? Agent Arendt, Captain Viesturs...and let's not bring up General Duncan.”

“They were incompetent and a disruption to my work.”

“Your _work_ , Dr. Zola, is for the Government of the United States of America.”

“My work is for _HYDRA_.”

“Yes, of course. But does HYDRA sign your checks? Or is it the good taxpayers of America keeping you in scalpels and schnapps?” The officer allows Zola to mutter angrily until he runs out of steam. “I thought so. Like it or not, Doctor, I'm here to make sure you remember that.”

Zola grumbles under his breath for a little longer, and then says, tight: “I am certain the relationship will be a productive one.”

“I live in hope,” says the officer wearily. “Now, I assume this is him?”

“Yes,” says Zola, and warms. He limps over to the subject—arthritis stiffening his left hip, worse in winter—and pulls the subject's fingers away from his face. Zola places a paternal hand on the metal shoulder. “My _hauptwerk_. I have never successfully replicated the manufacturing process. He is one of a kind.”

“What's your name?” the officer asks, and the subject blinks.

“He does not have one,” Zola says.

“That seems inefficient.” The officer goes to one knee beside the chair, so the subject is looking just slightly down instead of craning his neck. “Well, soldier? Are you ready to assassinate a president?”

“Yes, sir,” he says.

 

###### 1963

Except he isn't, because even as he raises the rifle sight to his face, the target brings his fists up and tilts sideways. The woman in pink reaches for the target. The soldier almost lowers the rifle in surprise. Just as he is thinking, _that was a shot, that was a gunshot_ , the target's head snaps forward in a mist of blood. It is immediately, obviously fatal: the right side of the target's skull is gone. The woman in pink lunges for something on the trunk of the car.

The soldier lowers his rifle. He laughs and laughs. Will this be considered mission failure or mission success?

 

###### 1965

The soldier lashes out in fear or pain or both, sensations blurring together into one terrible shriek of nerves. A technician ends up sprawled on the floor, clutching his wrist, whimpering.

“No!” the officer shouts. The soldier goes still and quiet in the chair. He waits to be punished. The officer comes and sits down on the technician's chair as the injured man is taken away.

“You don't damage your team,” the officer says. His voice is hard, but quiet. Patient. “No one in this cell is easily replaceable. They all have value. You take your frustration out on the enemy. Understood?”

All the soldier understands is that he's not being put under the halo. He's not being hurt. He'll do anything for this man.

“Yes,” the soldier says.

 

###### 1966

Captain Townsend—the soldier has remembered the officer's name over three separate wipe cycles now, for which he's immensely proud—is the soldier's favorite person. Townsend doesn't entirely prevent Zola from performing his experiments. He often presents the soldier with missions that are beneath his skills. He's brusque, snappish, and has no tolerance for slow learners. But Townsend doesn't like Zola. The soldier will forgive a lot of faults, for that.

When no one else is around, Townsend talks at the soldier. A response is never expected, so the soldier says nothing, even when Townsend asks leading questions. Townsend always answers them himself, given time. As irritating as the soldier finds it to be talked at like somebody's pet dog, it's better than being strapped to a table, and it allows him to gather information he can't access in any other way. How people live, what they care about. Current events that haven't been influenced by his bullets. Political changeovers he barely understands. Sports scores. The successful furtherance of HYDRA's infiltration into SHIELD. How much Townsend hates Zola.

Sometimes, after a particularly smooth mission, Townsend will praise the soldier. This is when the soldier's expected to respond: yes, sir—thank you, sir. Townsend makes the soldier understand his role within the system. He tells the soldier how his work has changed the world for the better, and where it hasn't yet, how it will someday. He shows the soldier his value. He shows the soldier that he has value. Zola also tells the soldier how important he is, but only indirectly; to other people, never to his face. The soldier's importance to Townsend is different from his importance to Zola. Zola appreciates what he's made. Townsend appreciates what the soldier can do.

The soldier blows up an archive, frames a religious leader, shoots four people, and prevents one assassination. Townsend, frustrated by the soldier's social limitations, teaches him how to be different people. Standing like this is aggressive, but standing like this makes people trust you. Tilt your head and smile. Good. Now smirk. Excellent. Flick your hair out of your eyes. Soften your gaze; you look like a sniper. Stop looking like a sniper. Now I want you to look crazy. No, quiet-crazy. You're a vet, homeless, you're scared of loud noises, you're nervous. You just want to be left alone. Now you're a businessman. Shoulders back. No, not that far back. Perfect.

He pretends he doesn't remember the lessons between wipes.

They suspect nothing, and he's never been more effective.

 

###### 1968

They wake him up. They put him back to sleep.

“If only they were all this easy,” Townsend says, and then the ice takes him down, down, down.

 

###### 1969

“Someone did your job for you last time,” Townsend says, while the soldier's still clearing the cobwebs from his head. The room is empty except for two techs in the corner, wearing headphones and listening to tapes, making notes. “Just a few hours before we were going to dispatch you. It's a funny old world, sometimes.”

“Like Dallas,” the soldier slurs, and feels more than sees Townsend go very still beside him. It's not a panicked stillness, but a thoughtful one, and that scares the soldier more. They're not going to kill him for this, he thinks; they won't be that merciful. They're going to punish him until he wishes he were dead, and they're going to wipe him clean. Like lye on meat, right down to the bones. He's going to forget Townsend's name and who the Prime Minister of England is and how to stand like a man who owns the world.

Townsend looks at the soldier. Townsend's eyes are brown, he notices, a pleasant, rich red-brown like mahogany wood, and it's cruel that he knows that fact now, that he'll know it for ten minutes before they scrape it out of him like an infection.

At last, Townsend speaks.

“Two weeks ago, you know, we landed on the moon—men got out and walked around. You should have seen it. It looked ridiculous, grown men bouncing around in marshmallow suits. Absolutely absurd. But it's history, and you can't laugh at history. Not while you're making it.”

The soldier says nothing. He registers that his right hand is shaking.

“Do you want to make history, soldier?”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier says.

“Good,” Townsend says, and stands up. He gestures for the soldier to do the same, and he does, unsteadily. Townsend doesn't help; just waits until the soldier has his legs under him. “We're going to work on invisibility. There's more than one way to make people overlook you...”

Zola comes through shortly after with the woman in the lab coat. He limps all the time now, even in the summer. The soldier realizes Zola is _old_. The soldier doesn't seem to age, but Zola does—Zola has. Zola will die someday, maybe even someday soon, and maybe things will be better.

Zola looks at Townsend and the soldier, scowls, and keeps walking. The woman with the lab coat and the dark hair— _the nurse_ , everyone says, as if they can't remember her name—doesn't even glance at them. The soldier is learning that the nurse is never interested in anything unless there's blood involved. He considers opening his wrist to see if anything lights up in her bored, flat gaze.

“Eyes on me,” Townsend murmurs, and they continue.

Half an hour later, Zola says, “If drama class is finished, might I borrow my patient?” and the respite is over, but even as the nurse hooks electrodes to the soldier's scalp, the secret he shares with Townsend, the only thing Zola can't cut into him and find in some wet corner, keeps him pliant and fearless under their hands.

 

###### 1971

The Soldier's never thought of himself as having a sensitive nose, but when Zola leans over his arm to check the IV bags, he can smell Zola's death galloping up under his skin. The Soldier only just manages to keep a smile off his face. A few more months or a few more years, it doesn't matter. It's the knowledge that warms him, not the timing. The Nurse won't be a problem; he's seen her look pinched, behind Zola's back, whenever Zola shouts and flails his arms about _his_ serum, _his_ patient, how he was going to change the world, change everything. As focused as she is when her tiny fingers are inside his calf, digging deep for shrapnel even as he's healing around it, she doesn't linger. Doesn't scratch on his bones for fun, not like Zola, taking notes and pretending it's science.

When he's alone with Townsend, the Soldier asks, “Did the Cowboys win the Super Bowl?” Townsend shakes his head mournfully.

“Want me to kill the coach?” the Soldier says: joking, toes in the water. Townsend booms laughter.

While the Soldier is stabbing a federal witness and staging the house to make it look like a robbery gone wrong, two songs about murder come on the radio. He kicks a pile of papers into artful randomness and hums along, one of the dead man's cigarettes between his lips. The song has a bright, easy beat. He can't remember ever humming before, but his body knows how to make the sounds, and he enjoys the vibration under his jaw. The burn of smoke in his mouth.

Unbelievably, before he leaves, another band starts singing about a boy on a homicidal rampage. Sign of the times, the Soldier figures; feeling light, feeling strong.

The world knows what's coming.

 

###### 1972

The king is dead. Long live the king.

“There will be some changes around here,” Major Townsend says to all assembled, from on top of a table. The Soldier perches on the edge of the wipe chair and chews on his mouthguard. “This cell is lagging behind in terms of security, academic output, and tech. Nobody's getting fired, but nobody's getting off easy, either. I want a think tank in the science department, and I expect everyone to be attending conferences in their respective fields—you'll be recomped if you report expenditures, see the accountants. I'm commissioning a STRIKE team; we're long overdue. And—folks? The whole reason we're stuck out here in God's asscrack is to take care of the asset. It's a waste of time and resources to use him as a guinea pig when there's a perfectly serviceable bioengineering lab downstairs.” Townsend looks at the clustered medical team. “Will that be a problem for anyone?”

The Nurse blinks slowly.

“Very good,” Townsend says. “You need warm bodies, I'll get you warm bodies. No outsourcing. Let's bring this cell into the twentieth century, shall we? You're dismissed. Yes, everybody. Scamper, there's work to be done. Wait, not you. Yes, you. Baby engineer. You had some promising ideas about cloaking in your last paper, I want to talk weapon upgrades.”

The Soldier watches Townsend hold court; watches the techs smiling and slapping each other on the back where they think Townsend or the Nurse can't see them. He's not the only one happy to see Zola for the last time. It occurs to him—the thought oddly distanced, as if from someone else's head, an avalanche of observations distilling down into sense—that the cell team is good, maybe better than good, and that they'll accomplish things here, someday, with a man of vision at the helm.

After the Nurse certifies the Soldier to fly, they send him down to Tennessee. It's the home of blues music and moon pies and not much else, according to Townsend—besides the target, who's surprisingly difficult to track down despite being a soft financial-sector citizen. This one isn't meant to be found, so he carefully buries the body under a rural construction site that looks like it's getting a concrete pour in the morning. He sleeps on a train to Kentucky before taking coach on a redeye, his metal hand swapped for a clunky set of hooks.

In the plane's bathroom, the Soldier pries up a plate in his forearm. Underneath a motor he knows how to twist out of place, there's a small compartment that used to hold cyanide, back in the days when they still thought they could kill him. He extracts a piece of paper from inside. It's yellow with age, folded one too many times; he'll have to replace it soon. Under the last entry, in tiny, painstaking block letters, he writes:

DEC 17 72 - KNOXVILLE TN - H. ATKINSON

Looking at the list of dates releases a little coil of anxiety under his sternum. It's patchy in places, and he knows there are missing entries. Times when they tanked him immediately after a mission. Years when he didn't remember the paper tucked in the crook of his elbow, when the wipes still held any power over him. Years that, frustratingly, haven't come back to him. Nevertheless, it's an island of certainty in his unpredictable world.

He remembers, suddenly, another piece of paper, another time. The drawing in his pocket, the one the Germans took from him and burned. For a long confused moment he tries to remember the mark, who it was that he was supposed to kill, and then it comes back to him. The drawing that was him, his face. _Hübscher Junge_. The smiling boy with the wet-dark hair. He squints at the mirror, but the details elude him.

If he's counting right—and he's not, he knows he's not, he's missing too much information—then, assuming he was twenty in 1950, he's in his forties now. He doesn't look it. Under the unforgiving fluorescents, he looks about twenty-three. A baby, if it weren't for the muscles standing out on his neck, but he's hollow-cheeked, too skinny; he'll have to ask Townsend to put a bug in the nutritionist's ear. He can see why someone wanted to draw his portrait, once. He looks magnificent, focused, like a hunting dog. Bright eyes. A small, old scar under his right ear. Some mother's son gone off to war and come back—stronger.

He bares his teeth in the mirror.

 

###### 1974

He's undercover for three days in a police station in Nebraska before he can get into position. They could send a spy, they could bribe a dirty cop, but they send him instead, because Townsend wants to know if he can. And he's perfect, he's _perfect_. He watches the men and flirts with the women, learns how to bitch like a junior officer who's been transferred against his will, eh, what can you do, though? He drinks their terrible coffee like it's water. In the basement, he shreds files and replaces them with nearly identical fakes.

It's a risk to their secret. The Soldier isn't supposed to know how to do these things. He should be a clean slate. Townsend has the engineers make alterations to the helmet, makes them think they're installing subliminal learning packets. The Nurse knows, he's sure of it, but she's not interested in subterfuge: it doesn't bleed.

The wipes make him feel clean instead of empty, bright instead of disoriented, a shot of electric caffeine straight to the brain. He loses minutes, here and there, but it's a price he'll gladly pay. Just the cost of doing business. The cost of being awake. He'll pay more than that, if it means he gets to keep thinking.

 

###### 1975

Monsoon season in India, stirring up trouble. It rains so hard the arm shorts out. He's been through worse, but it's a rough week.

December in New York feels like an apology, a bomb in an airport terminal; smoke, chaos, but the Soldier is halfway across the city by then, emptying a meteorological station HQ wants eliminated for reasons incomprehensible even to Townsend. The Soldier counts his bullets and picks up every casing, letting them clink in his pocket like spare change as he boards the subway to Manhattan. The city feels familiar, more familiar than ever, more than any other city. His feet know how to walk the streets. The paper in his wrist says he killed someone here in 1970, but they had him moved a lot in Zola's day. Maybe they kept him here a while.

He watches the ball drop in Times Square before he heads to the pick-up point, and it doesn't feel like disobedience at all.

 

###### 1978

Bangkok, Arlington, Detroit, Seoul, New York, Lima, _god_ it's a busy year, they're going to have to start charging rent on his cryo chamber just to make it worthwhile. He knows how much his thaw cycle costs these days, but someone must be impressed, because the cell's received two commendations in as many years, and Townsend's a Lieutenant Colonel now. Not so you'd notice, the way nothing goes to Townsend's head. The Soldier suspects Townsend would feel just as fulfilled running a preschool as he does running a HYDRA cell. Some days, when the STRIKE boys get rowdy or the chemists accidentally contaminate the water supply with hallucinogens, there isn't much of a difference.

The Soldier watches them bicker and carouse from the safety of the chair, where the restraints make everyone afraid of him, where he finds it easy to feign indifference, forgetfulness, barely restrained violence. They're his people, he realizes, and he's theirs, and he's damned proud of them. They're changing the world.

 

###### 1981

The arm starts acting up in a way that even the bioengineers can't fix, so they hire an expert, his very own mechanic. She's a tall, gawky girl, some child prodigy fresh out of Washington, two PhDs in robotics under her belt and another in neuroanatomy on the way.

When Townsend introduces the kid to the arm, the Soldier grins at her like a psychopath, just to see what she'll do. She goes pale as a sheet, and then she sets her jaw, hooking a wheely stool with one foot and a screwdriver with her little finger, popping whole sections open before she's even sat down. When he shifts a couple of plates and nearly pinches her, she flicks one off at an angle, right into his jaw. He stares at her.

“Oops,” she says dryly.

He smiles at her like a person this time, warm and easy and out of sight, and pretends he doesn't notice her fingers trembling at her own audacity. Little lionhearted girl with her plum-red mane. They'll have her in Silicon Valley building exo-skeleton armor and robotic wasps by the end of the year; she'll have her own team before the decade is out.

She scowls at his grin. He'll be sorry to see this one go.

 

###### 1982

“Dr. Harrison,” she says, when she takes his surprise for confusion. She shakes his limp hand, slapstick; there's an EMP disk on his bicep, shorting everything out so she can work deep in his elbow. “I've worked on your arm before, but I guess you wouldn't remember.”

“You're not old enough to be a doctor,” the Soldier says, dancing as close as he dares.

“Three PhDs,” she says lightly, and that answers that: she finished the neuroanatomy degree while he was asleep. “A lot more qualified than the simians who've been fucking around in here for the last few years, _gawd_ , I'm amazed you had any fine motor control at _all_. It's a goddamned tragedy. I'm going to feed them their own testicles.”

The guards at the door shift uncomfortably. Townsend looks as proud as a dog with two tails.

Lahore, New York, St. Petersburg, smooth as clockwork, smooth as the new servos in his fingers, strangling every target against orders just to test the strength.

“Good?” she asks, when he steps out of the helicopter, and: “Good,” he says, but she won't let them tank him, not until she's tweaked for another five hours, not until he can build a tower of playing cards higher than the chair.

 

###### 1983

Harrison finds the compartment.

She looks at the paper inside, edges just beginning to soften, _63 65 69_ clear as day in blocky, unschooled letters, the edge of names just visible near the fold. She looks at the paper. She looks at the Soldier.

She closes the compartment.

The Soldier isn't sure he's ever felt this mixture of panic and desperate gratitude before.

Later, oil on her fingers, bent over his arm, she whispers, “Do you remember all of them?”

He whispers back: “How would I know if I didn't?”

 

###### 1984

Mexico.

Houston.

New York.

Shanghai.

New York.

Chesapeake.

New York.

Why do so many targets end up in _New York_ , shit, it's like some kind of vortex—

 

###### 1986

Harrison's default position is bent over the Soldier's arm, grumbling. It's almost comforting. He's not saying he took a spill on a sugar-sand beach with half his plates open on _purpose_ , but he's not entirely upset at the outcome. Harrison is cleaning out the internal works with an air compressor and a toothbrush, swearing under her breath in Cuban-accented Spanish. Townsend and half the techs are watching a television that someone—the Soldier suspects Townsend himself—has smuggled into the cell. As far as the Soldier can tell, the picture hasn't changed in five minutes.

“Give me a toothbrush,” the Soldier says. She hands him one with an unimpressed look. It's purple, for his sins. “If I'm going to sit on my ass, I may as well get something done.”

“Oh, _now_ you're sorry,” Harrison says. Something happens on the television, and the assembled men holler and whoop, startling them both. Harrison grumbles something foul.

He shifts the tiny plates on his fingers, flicking grains out of the joins. “It was an accident. I don't roll around in sand for fun.”

“After Luxembourg, I know you like to roll around in _blood_ for shits and giggles, so I'd—oh my god.”

The Soldier glances up at her tone, about to protest, but she isn't looking at him. She's looking at the television, mouth open. All the Soldier can see is a cloud of smoke, and two techs with their hands over their mouths. On screen, a man is saying, “—hearing from launch control, the vehicle has exploded—”

“Did we do that?” the Soldier asks.

“No,” says Townsend, hollow.

The Soldier can be forgiven for thinking it, surely. He's only ever known death as a form of progress.

 

###### 1988

Paris.

Chicago.

New York, New York.

Isn't there a song that goes like that?

(He doubts it's about death, but he remembers the seventies.)

The Soldier has a moment of wall-eyed terror when he returns from Manhattan. He sees Townsend and the Nurse standing with Harrison, Townsend talking and smiling; the Nurse, as ever, looking bored. Harrison is a little shorter than Townsend, miles taller than the Nurse, and next to them she looks so young. Townsend's hair is more gray than ginger, now, and there's a thin streak through the Nurse's dark hair, striping her smooth bun: steel, not silver. They're getting old, like Zola got old, and one day, when the Soldier's still looking like a kid fresh out of the army, they're going to die. There's going to be someone new in both of their places. Another Townsend—or another Zola. It could even be sooner than later; cell leaders tend to leave in coffins.

He tells himself that Townsend hated Zola, that he isn't the kind of man to leave things up to chance, that he'll have successors picked out who will respect the cell, maintain its progress—maintain its asset. Whatever happens, the Soldier'll be taken care of, like any of the weapons in the armory.

It doesn't work very well.

During pre-tank, the Nurse furrows her eyebrows at his soaring heart rate. She injects him with something that fuzzes the world, makes him dumb and happy. When he smiles up at her, she taps the middle of his forehead with one finger and says, flatly, “Never go to bed worried.”

He should be angry, but he's thankful.

 

###### 1989

The Soldier disappears a journalist in Greece, props up a dictator in Argentina, fakes a terrible accident for a mountaineering team of businessmen in Alaska. He spends most of the climb being pecked at by memories of the crevasse, the boulder—something about the bone-chilling cold shakes them loose. Oxygen deprivation, maybe. He tries to distract himself by wondering how long he could survive on Everest without any gear. He suspects there's a point where he would eventually freeze or suffocate, but it would probably be something more like sleep. Hibernating, until someone found him and thawed him out. He could see the future that way. Something to think about, when the new world order is realized and they let him retire.

( _If_ they let him retire.)

The concept of retirement amuses him on the way back down, after he's left the businessmen at the bottom of an icy gorge. He thinks about a village he saw once—Spain? Italy?—with gardens surrounding every cottage, flowers he doesn't know the name of: flowers on the eaves, flowers in the yard, flowers spilling over the path, bees and hummingbirds making an extraordinary drone. Neighbors gossiping over their fences, women in white aprons and men with their collars undone. Children in the tall grass, laughing. A gentle chaos, the peacefulness of never being alone, never being afraid. He could turn the chair on every morning and sleep in a bath of ice every night.

He's never wanted something greater than the next mission. The novelty of it keeps him warm until the helicopter lands.

 

☙

 

Cold.

Coldfirepain _pain_?

The floor.

Cold.


	2. rites of spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Get out here,” he sighs. “It's a free country.”
> 
> The kid stops with one foot on either side of the jamb. “Is it, sir?”
> 
> The Soldier shrugs. “Is for us.”

###### 2015

“Steve—Steve, slow down. You found _what_?”

“Hang on, I'll just—I'll show you.” Steve hits the video-call button and points his phone's camera into the room. A moment too late, he realizes he probably should have warned Sam about the sheer quantity of blood about to appear on his screen.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Sam says. “Okay, things I didn't need in HD: that. Okay. Wait, you said you thought _Bucky_ did this?”

“Look,” Steve says. He steps as close as he can without standing in the tacky mess, zooming in on the sawblade. “See the metal shavings? And the, uh, on the floor, I won't show you a close-up—”

“Thanks.”

“—but it looks like an elbow and about four inches of the end of a stump. There's metal sticking out of it, wires and things.”

"Dude," Sam says thinly. “You think he cut his own arm off.”

“I think so,” Steve says. He turns off the camera and puts his phone back to his ear.

“Jesus. Je-sus.” Sam groans. Steve thinks he hears him rubbing his face, the quiet rasp of beard. “Okay. Let's think rationally about this. The last place we think he hit was Philly, right?”

Neither of them have been out to see it, but they sure heard about it: a complete bloodbath, five STRIKE agents killed—slaughtered, really, torn nearly limb from limb, piled on the floor with six dead civilians shot full of Russian bullets. Whoever killed the agents had taken their cash, their weapons, and in one case, their clothes. The lack of evidence means they can't be sure if they're dealing with a rogue superhuman, the Winter Soldier on a murder spree, or James Barnes avenging civilian deaths. Steve's clinging grimly to the last, and the fact that eleven other residents of the building survived their wounds; the Winter Soldier's file indicates he's not the type to leave witnesses alive.

“That happened, what—thirty hours ago?” Steve asks. Sam makes an affirmative noise. “That's not enough time to get to DC on foot, so he's got some kind of transport. Something must've happened to make him come back here and, well.”

“Steve, I hate to say it, but that is a _lot_ of blood.”

“I've lost more than that and been okay,” Steve says, but he doesn't feel overly confident about it. He has no idea how similar his and Bucky's physiologies might be, from a medical perspective. “He had it under control when he left, at least—there's no trail down the hall or outside. Is that a good sign?”

“Probably,” says Sam. “I mean, you gotta assume he's okay, there's nothing you can do. Really, man, you should get out of there. You don't need to see that shit.”

“I'm okay, Sam,” Steve says, firm. “If I need a break, I'll tell you. I promise.”

“Hey, I'll believe it when I see it.” It's warm, though, so Steve takes it like it's intended. Sam makes a noise Steve can't interpret, and then he says, “I—hmm. So I've got a question I probably shouldn't ask.”

“Shoot.”

“He cut it off, we're assuming? Like, by himself, nobody held him down and made him. So, QED, for some reason he wanted it gone bad enough to make friends with a circular saw.”

“Yeah,” Steve says slowly.

“So,” says Sam, “Where's the _arm_?”

 

* * *

 

###### 1989

The Soldier regrets crawling to consciousness when the world presents him with a murderous headache and a desperately uncomfortable twitch in his left arm.

He squints in the direction of the wall calendar. It's too blurry to read, but he can see the blue muscle car above the dates. He squints harder, because _that_ can't be right. He remembers the muscle car, right down to the HYDRA emblem somebody doodled on its hood with felt pen. Why have they taken him out twice in one month? The electricity costs _alone—_

The muscles along his left side give a particularly vicious twitch, and he looks over to see Harrison working inside his arm.

“Sorry,” she says. He can't see her eyes behind the welding goggles, but there's a pinch in the middle of her forehead. “The guy who did pre-tank didn't check your plates, there's some ice damage to the micro-pistons. They're shorting out.”

He glances around, but they're alone. “I thought you _did_ do pre-tank.”

“Nope. I wasn't even here. What, were you daydreaming?” That's—worrisome. He hasn't lost days in a long time. Harrison grins at the inside of the Soldier's arm, but it's not a happy expression. “I guess the brass wanted to see if I was expendable. Budget cuts, and all that.”

“What else is new,” the Soldier groans, gingerly raising his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. If he's going to get out with a hangover, they might as well let him start drinking. A fresh wave of pain makes him add, “And, hey, tell the cryo guy to check the thresholds. It's going to be aneurysm city if this escalates.”

“Calm your tits,” Harrison says, popping her torch menacingly. “And General Murray's going to be here any second, so watch the mouth.”

“Murray?” the Soldier demands, wondering if he's losing his mind. Everything's jumbled, unreal. “Who's he? Where the hell's _Townsend_?”

Harrison raises her goggles, revealing blue liner, a tiny eyebrow piercing, and a confused expression.

“He's dead,” she says, and the Soldier barely gets his mouth open before the new guy swans into the room, trailed by most of the tech staff and half of STRIKE.

General Murray's not in uniform; he wears mufti and the enormous, half-mad presence the Soldier has come to identify with high ranking military bigwigs, Townsend being largely the exception. Murray's not fat, by any means, but all his lines are soft: round nose, round cheeks, sturdy round fingers. White hair, close-cropped white beard. Small half-moon glasses. Santa Claus, if Santa Claus did a hundred push-ups a day.

“Lazarus!” Murray booms, and claps the Soldier on the back. “How are you feeling, son? Have a nice nap?”

“I don't sleep,” the Soldier says cautiously, and flinches when Murray laughs, huge and deep. No one has ever made a noise that loud in the prep room.

“Yes, yes, of course, _le petit mort_ ,” says Murray. He pats the Soldier's flesh arm. The Soldier isn't used to being touched this much by someone who isn't wielding a needle or a butane torch. It's difficult to interpret. He concludes the gestures are meant to be comradely, and refrains from breaking Murray's hand. Murray continues: “I have always wondered, you know, how it feels once they close your little door.”

“It feels,” the Soldier says, “Like freezing to death.”

A guard clears his throat. Murray chuckles. He shoos Harrison away and steals her seat. Bereft of his assistant, the Soldier ignores his audience and closes the arm plates himself. Unless Murray has a mission for him, he's not worth the attention.

“I'm Townsend's replacement,” Murray says at last, and looks over his glasses at the Soldier.

“Townsend,” the Soldier repeats dully. His head throbs like a metronome. “How did he die?”

Murray, smiling, holds up one finger and crosses to the filing cabinet. The Soldier watches as he spins the tiny combination lock without, apparently, caring that he is being watched. The Soldier half-heartedly memorizes the numbers while he waits. In the corners, the techs are very, very still. Harrison is watching Murray's every move like a hawk.

Murray snags a crash cart on his return journey and dumps the contents of a manilla envelope onto its surface. The Soldier leans over the photographs.

 _Shit_.

“When I asked you to eliminate the threat,” Murray says, “I wasn't expecting you to be quite so thorough. I do appreciate a man who loves his work.”

“Sir,” one of the techs says, “You're not supposed to show the asset previous—”

“Piffle,” Murray snorts. “Says who? The German nutter who discovered him? I don't know if you've noticed, boyo, but that guy's doing time as a tape deck these days.”

“I'm pretty sure he was Swiss,” another tech says.

“I'm pretty sure you're fired,” says Murray.

The Soldier picks up one photograph after another and thinks, _Oh, this is bad._

“How did you override protocol?” the Soldier asks. Over Murray's shoulder, Harrison makes a throat-cutting gesture and an over-the-top wince, her red lips torquing. He ignores her. “I'm only programmed to take orders from Townsend—”

“Unless someone in a position of authority provides sound evidence of treasonous intent.” Murray makes a _tut-tut_ sound. “Townsend didn't have the brains the good Lord gave a peanut. Kept his personal diary on his workstation, the silly bastard. You know what his password was? His wife's maiden name. He was compiling information to take to SHIELD.”

The Soldier doesn't say: Townsend was the most loyal officer HYDRA ever produced. He doesn't say: Townsend took this cell from forgettable to unparalleled in less than a year. He doesn't say: respectfully, sir, there is no way in hell you could have convinced me to kill him. He doesn't say: we had a secret.

He doesn't say: I would remember.

The Soldier massages his forehead with the heel of his hand. His ears are ringing. He feels dizzy. “Requesting medical assistance. I need—”

His top lip is suddenly very warm. He opens his eyes.

“Shit, shit! Cole, get the Nurse, now!” Harrison barks, and a tech scurries. The Soldier looks in vague amazement at the amount of blood pouring from his face to his lap. “Pinch the bridge of your nose. _Shit_. I want an x-ray of his head, I think Woods skipped half the fucking pre-tank check—”

Papers flip behind the Soldier's head. “Logbook says he went under without medical supervision.”

“He _what_? I'm gonna—”

The Nurse arrives at that moment, cutting short Harrison's graphic promises of what she'll do to Woods if she catches him. When the Nurse takes the Soldier's hand away from his face, a river of blood and clear fluid comes out of his nose.

“Everyone calm down,” the Nurse says, shoving a towel under the Soldier's nose and putting his fingers back where they belong. “Basilar fractures are comparatively minor. If he is still discharging cerebrospinal fluid in twenty minutes, then we may be concerned. I do, however, wish to talk to the technician who initiated cryogenesis, and whoever authorized the seal without my approval.”

“Oh, we're gonna talk,” Harrison growls, and gets a blank look for her troubles. “It was Woods, ma'am. Check the logs, I wasn't even on deck.”

“Fine,” the Nurse says. “Let us get this over with. You, inject a dose of morphine. You, begin a hypertonic saline drip once the bleeding stops. If he is still producing fluid by two o'clock, come and fetch me. Understood?”

There's a burst of “yes ma'am!” from several places in the room, but the Soldier barely hears them.

He's looking at the photographs.

 

☙

 

Laying on a gurney with nothing to do but watch his saline IV drain into his arm, the Soldier can't help overhearing the argument in the next room.

“If he hadn't been thawed for another month, half the fucking servos might have been ruined. You get that, Woods? Replacing even one of those is more than your job is worth.”

“That is in addition to the physical damage. The asset is unable to regenerate during stasis, and the thaw is difficult enough for his systems to handle without adding compounded stress. This is a violation of the most elementary operating procedures. A child could have done better.”

“Ma'am, I-I didn't—”

“I authorized it,” Murray says, and no one replies to that for ten whole seconds.

“You authorized it,” the Nurse says, more toneless than usual. “You authorized what, precisely? I may take this opportunity to remind you that your organization has built itself to be dependent on the asset's functionality. He is a delicate instrument, the only one of his kind, and he is exclusively to be used for missions of utmost importance. And yet, you decided it was appropriate to have him draw and quarter the cell leader, without the assistance of the robotics technician, without notifying headquarters. And then, you thought it was appropriate to initiate cryogenesis before his regeneration had an opportunity to work.” A pause, and then a tone the Soldier has never heard in the Nurse's voice: actual irritation. “Are you out of your mind?”

The Soldier smiles faintly at the ceiling. It's nice to have a fan.

“Townsend was an immediate threat to the security of this cell, and to all of HYDRA,” Murray says, sounding unruffled. “I knew the asset could eliminate him quicker and more quietly than any of the STRIKE teams. I mean, Christ, a ten-word memo to the right person—you _know_ how tenuous our situation is out here. I couldn't let that happen.”

“Yes, I'm certain the opportunity for promotion had nothing to do with it.”

“I take umbrage with that insinuation. I would've done the same if it was Dr. Harrison, or Agent Woods, or even you.”

“Is that a threat, General Murray?”

“Only if you have a reason to feel threatened by justice, ma'am.”

“I am only ever threatened by incompetence,” the Nurse says. “The rules are in place to protect the investment put into the care and upkeep of an irreplaceable object. But by all means, continue to flout standard operating procedure. I am quite certain you will be able to compensate the organization for their losses.”

“I've built my professional life around that arm,” Harrison adds, “And if it ever gets treated so negligently again, I'll be _leaving_ , and good luck finding anyone with the specialization requisites to replace me.”

“The lab boys tell me he's going to outlive every one of us,” says Murray. “We'll all be replaced someday.”

“Yeah, and hopefully by the people we train. General, weren't you listening? The asset's more important than any of us, and we've got a duty to keep him functioning at full capacity—otherwise, what the hell is the point?”

“Yes, yes, all right, _thank you_ , ladies. I now have a much better idea of the scope of my responsibilities, and an understanding of the penalty for taking shortcuts on procedure. I assure you nothing of the sort will ever happen again.”

The voices grow indistinct. Walking away. The Soldier stares at the ceiling.

Townsend's dead, and—shit, _shit_ , no—he's not going to panic, start over. Townsend's dead, and maybe if he thinks it hard enough he'll believe it, but fundamentally, there's nothing he can do about it. He's not—he's _not—_ going to worry about something he can't change. It's a waste of energy. Inefficient. And if there's something the Soldier is famous for above all things, it's efficiency. He'll work through this the only way he knows how: by doing.

When the door opens, the Soldier is sitting on the floor next to his IV stand.

“Wow,” Harrison says. The Soldier looks up carefully, mindful of his head, which still feels like a rotten egg about to crack. Harrison's leaning in the doorway, hip cocked. “That's a good look on you.”

“What?”

She points at her own face. “Raccoon eyes. Both of 'em.” The Soldier grunts. Harrison crosses the room and checks his IV. “This is empty. I'll go get the Nurse, see if she wants to give you a—”

“Harrison,” the Soldier says, and something in his tone makes her grind to a halt. “Come and take a look at these.”

She makes a face. “Do I have to?”

“Just—look, will you?”

She takes a stack of six, her mouth compressed into a thin line. Despite her obvious revulsion, she gives each of them a dutiful examination. “What am I supposed to be looking for?” she asks, after a minute.

“Here,” the Soldier says, pointing. The IV trailing from his hand. “And here, and here. Look at the angle.”

“I'm not seeing it.”

“Those were made by a left-handed swing.”

Harrison frowns and switches photos.

“Another thing. Does that look like my work?”

“No,” Harrison says slowly, and then, with a twist of her mouth, almost belligerent: “ _No_. Maybe if you hated the guy, but...”

“But I liked Townsend,” he agrees.

Harrison looks at him.

“This,” the Soldier says, “Is a coup.”

Harrison gets up and shuts the door. When she returns, she crouches on the floor beside him and hisses, “Fucking—are you _serious_? You think Murray—”

“I _know_ he did. You know it too. I didn't kill Townsend. Besides, there's no way in hell I would have done this kind of sloppy work, even if Townsend was dirty.”

“Are you going to tell someone?”

“And give up my leverage over Murray? Not a chance.”

She bites a long nail, twisting it between her teeth, staring hard at a photograph. “Just...be careful.”

“What's he going to do?” the Soldier sneers. “ _Wipe_ me? That hasn't worked since about 1961, bless 'em, but they can try.”

Harrison says nothing. She just looks at the photos.

“Don't worry so much,” he says.

“One day, they're going to figure out how to burn you out of your own head—for good. You know that, right?”

“A few more cryo sessions like that, and they won't have to.”

Harrison flings the photographs into the Soldier's lap and leaps to her feet. “That's not the point, goddammit! If you'd just _comply_ a little more—can't you see—do you even _care_ about the mission? About HYDRA's future?”

“I'll start caring more about HYDRA's future,” the Soldier says gently, “When it starts caring about mine.”

For a split second, Harrison looks like she's going to slap him. The moment passes, and she subsides, flopping down next to him and tilting her head back against the gurney. There's something unspeakably tired in the arrangement of her long limbs.

“What's gotten into you?” she whispers. “You never used to think like that.”

He shrugs. “Got to thinking about quitting. About—after.”

“So why don't you?”

“Why don't _you_?” the Soldier counters.

She looks at him for a long time without answering.

“Because I believe in what we're doing,” she says. “Because it's the right thing to do. Even when it's hard—especially when it's hard. And maybe I won't see the results in my lifetime, but I know we're making a difference. Security is better than freedom. I know we're changing the world.”

“Well, there you go.”

Harrison says nothing for another long stretch of minutes. The Soldier listens to her breathing, the way it kicks up and down depending on what she's thinking about. He can hear people walking through the halls, moving around Downstairs. Business as usual, even if the whispers might be a little louder today, anxieties a little stronger.

“What are you going to do?” Harrison asks at last.

“You and the Nurse are the only ones who know that I'm autonomous,” the Soldier says. “I'd like to keep it that way, at least until I know Murray's game. If it seems like he has the best interests of the cell at heart, then, fine. Otherwise...”

“But if you're right—then he's a murderer.”

The Soldier shrugs. “Who isn't, around here? We're at war.”

“Uh, me?”

The Soldier waggles his silver fingers in front of her face. “You make the weapons.”

He almost expects her to get angry, but she only sighs, long and thin, like it's coming up from her toes. “It's not the same. Not when it's in your own house, to someone you—”

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

 

☙

 

The Nurse forbids them from tanking the Soldier for a week. Seven whole days out of the ice, but no mission, and it nearly sends him down the well for good. Flashes of things that aren't his, in his head: a rooftop, a woman, something blue as the ocean but not made of water. For the first three nights, instead of sleeping on his gurney, he quarters himself in the armory, sharpening combat knives, cleaning guns, checking ammo stores. By day he stalks the halls, scaring the new operatives and turning into a mockery of himself, security-paranoid, obsessively checking the early-warning systems. He tears holes up and down his arm to watch them heal. He rubs his face to meat. He hates for anyone to see him like this. He hates to be alone.

Murray doesn't come out of his office.

On the fourth day, Harrison drags the Soldier outside practically by the ear. The three STRIKE boys in the exercise yard stop what they're doing, but they don't leave. The Soldier is half tempted to give them the crazy eyes, just to see if they'll run. While he's debating, Harrison smacks a baseball bat against his chest. He grabs it, mostly to keep it from falling to the ground, and stares at her.

“You want me to beat someone to death,” he says flatly, almost a question.

“No, I want you to _hit baseballs_ ,” Harrison growls, and shoves him closer to the fence. She stalks off in the other direction, dragging a duffel bag behind her.

“If one of those hits me in the head, the Nurse is going to pull your spine out,” he says, and then she's too far away to hear him without shouting. He concentrates on looking like he's obeying orders. Dead eyes. He can feel the STRIKE boys watching him.

The Soldier misses the first ball because he doesn't get the bat up in time, but the second one makes a crack like a rifle and soars over the far perimeter fence. He gives the bat an appreciative look and wonders if it would be a viable distance weapon. Harrison throws another ball while he's contemplating the finer points of arc and spin, and he only just manages to connect; it pops straight up. He hears someone laugh, and then someone getting punched in the arm. He doesn't turn.

By the time the bag is empty, more than half of the baseballs have ended up outside the perimeter, some all the way into the forest, and there's a hole in the fence he's hoping Harrison can explain away. His shoulders are actually sore.

“Better?” Harrison asks, taking the bat.

“They're going to give you shit for this,” he says, instead of responding. She knows the answer anyway.

“What, for being the Asset Whisperer?” She flips the bat like it's a knife, end over end. “Yeah, no, Agent Grant tried that last year. It didn't end well for him.”

“The hell did he say?”

“Asked if I was fucking you.”

The Soldier chokes.

“I duct-taped him upside down in the crematorium.” When he blinks at her, she shrugs. “What, you thought they'd let me alone around you if I couldn't defend myself? Special Forces mole, sucker. Anyway, nobody's had the guts to bother me since.”

“Uh, I'm glad.”

“Don't worry,” Harrison says, grinning. “Your virtue's safe with me.”

He'd like to shove her a little, just playing, the way the STRIKE boys fool around, but they're in the open. On their way back to the cell door, they pass the boys at the fence. One of the STRIKE agents is on the other side, tossing baseballs back into the perimeter one by one, and the two on the inside are catching them, weaving around and laughing. The Soldier feels a sick pang of something—jealousy, maybe—before he's thrown sideways by a memory so vivid he stumbles. A forest, muddy ground, mud on his boots, mud on his trousers, mud _everywhere_ ; he's walking with men in the forest, throwing a dud grenade back and forth between them, over each other's heads, laughing, and someone is saying: “Come on, Joe DiMaggio—”

When he comes back to himself, he's crouched with his hands over his head, braced for a plane crash. The STRIKE boys are staring, wary. Harrison is standing loose-limbed, hands at her sides, non-threatening. He gasps in a breath; lets it out. She helps him stand.

“I want to sleep,” he whispers, and she takes him back to the prep room, but it's the ice he needs, not the gurney.

 

☙

 

The Soldier is pacing restlessly through the halls when he hears: “Lazarus!” from General Murray's half open door.

He takes three steps backward and nudges the door open further. Murray is gesturing at the chair on the other side of his cluttered desk. The Soldier sits in it, uncomfortable with the door at his back. He says, “Sir?”

Murray shakes his head. “None of that. This is an informal chat, son. I wanted to ask you about your file.”

The Soldier glances down to where Murray's broad fingers are pressing down on two haphazard stacks of paper and photographs. He taps them like he's playing the piano when he sees the Soldier looking.

“I don't know what's in my file,” the Soldier says, carefully dumb.

“I'll tell you what's in your file: a goddamn mess.” Papers flip; a photograph slides out. “Townsend's notes are more like haikus, and the guy before that...”

The Soldier feels sweat on the small of his back and says, as blandly as possible, “Zola.”

He isn't nearly as neutral as he hopes, because Murray shoots him a surprised glance over his glasses. “You remember him?”

“He made an impression.”

“I can sure as hell see why,” Murray says, “If he was as nutty as his notes. Unintelligible _and_ in code, which is just plain insulting. Where's the trust, Doc? Anyway, they tell me you can be killed, but after reading your medical history—well, I may never sleep again, but I'm also finding that claim a little hard to swallow.”

“I can be killed,” the Soldier lies. “Just cut off my head.”

“Are you sure it wouldn't grow _back_?” Murray asks, plainly dubious, and the Soldier lets his expression crack as if against his will. “Aha! I was wondering if you could smile.”

“I can smile,” he agrees, nodding.

Murray nods back, the two of them bobbing-birds over the desk. “Remarkable, really. Doesn't seem to me you'd have a lot to smile about. Almost total declarative amnesia, eh? But you still know how to fire a gun. Fascinating, the way the brain works in extremes. I suppose you won't be any help at all, getting this mess in order.”

“There's one thing I can help with,” the Soldier says, idiot-slow. “May I have a piece of paper and a pen?”

With obvious amusement, Murray hands over a sheet of looseleaf and a pen with a well-chewed lid. The latter gives the Soldier a moment of pause; Murray's habit, or Townsend's? He shakes it off and writes. All caps, neat, blocky, the only way he can seem to make his letters. Some part of him is frustrated by that; he feels as though he should be better with his hands.

“This goes at the back,” he says, and passes it over the desk.

Murray takes it with a smile. It slips into a neutral expression, and then into a frown, and from there, into something very concerned. The Soldier drapes his metal arm over the back of the chair and rests one ankle on his knee, relaxing into it as Murray pales. When Murray looks up, the Soldier smirks, just like Townsend taught him.

“Pretty smooth,” the Soldier says. “I might even have believed it, if you hadn't shown me the photos. I do appreciate,” he murmurs, leaning in, “A man who loves his work. No, no, don't go for the gun in your drawer—you have to cut off my head, remember? I walked away from a machine gun barrage in '76. It's probably right there in my file.”

“What do you want?” Murray asks. He's scared and trying not to show it, which the Soldier can respect. Harrison was more successful at hiding her fear, the first time, but Harrison wasn't trapped in a room with him, alone. Harrison hadn't done anything wrong.

“Me? Nothing. It's just information, General, you don't need to feel threatened by it. I'm not going to rat you out. You made this bed, and now you've got to lie in it. But, Murray?” The Soldier drops his ankle and leans his elbows on his knees. “Next time you murder someone I respect, try to be less inept at covering it up.”

Murray swallows, but otherwise he's still as a deer.

“I don't care why you did it,” the Soldier continues, in case Murray is stumped. “All I expect is that this cell maintains the same exemplary level of organization and output it had under Townsend's command. You manage that? Then—” He spreads his hands, generous. “We have no problems.”

The Soldier stands up and comes around the desk. Murray doesn't flinch, not quite, but tension straightens his spine and deepens the lines around his eyes. When the Soldier extends his right hand, Murray stares at it as if the Soldier had taken his pants off and waved his dick around.

“I'm the Fist of HYDRA,” the Soldier says, when Murray peels his eyes off the hand and looks at him. “I've got people trying to kill me from here to Antarctica. Last thing I need is more enemies.”

Tentatively and then very firmly, Murray clasps his hand and shakes it. The Soldier grins. Murray's answering grin is watery and hesitant at first, but it quickly turns genuine when the Soldier salutes wrong-handedly, walking backwards, spinning just before he hits the door. He pauses with his hand on the knob.

“Just one thing,” he says, turning. Murray looks at him expectantly. Nervous, still, around the edges. “The skull fracture. How'd that happen?”

Murray groans and pushes his fingers under his glasses. “Woods didn't know you needed help getting out of the unit. He opened the door, and you just...” He makes an evocative gesture with his other hand. “Fell out. Hit your head square on the edge of the gurney.”

The Soldier snorts, tries to restrain it, and then laughs out loud. He can't help it. It's the stupidest thing he's ever heard. Murray and Woods bumbling about, and the Soldier himself, tipping right out of the cryo chamber like a drunk. After a minute, even Murray chuckles. The Soldier makes a gesture, still laughing: _right? right?_ It's too funny.

“Hell,” the Soldier says, getting himself under control. “Did you fire him? Woods?”

“Sent him Downstairs,” Murray says.

“Of course.” Nothing like working with genetic experiments to teach you a little respect about abominations. He almost feels sorry for the poor kid. “You know,” he adds, following an instinct he can't justify, “Most afternoons, round about sixteen hundred, STRIKE is in the armory cleaning guns and talking trash. You want to learn about the cell, make a good impression with the boys? That's where you want to be.”

“I'll take that under advisement,” Murray says. It comes out a little more on the warmer side of stern.

 _Gotcha_ , the Soldier thinks, and hides a grin on his way out the door.

 

☙

 

Just five hours before he'd been scheduled to go back under the ice, HQ sends a mission down the tubes, and it's a big one. The cell scrambles to get the Soldier ready. In the midst of the chaos, IVs and injections, two techs easing the wipe helmet off and another strapping his knives to his calves, he feels like he's lighting up, up, up, riding a high, unstoppable. Murray walks with him to the jet, the medical team in their wake, his very own guard of honor.

In Colombia, there's a shadow organization within the government that knows too much. The Soldier blows it up, and then he spends six days tracking down the stragglers, pinning their disappearances on whoever is most convenient: gangs, terrorists, accidents. The new drugs in his arm keep him laser-focused, tireless. He doesn't sleep, and he's halfway to mania by the time it's done, but it's goddamned flawless. He worries that he'll lose his tenuous grip on reality and manage to bring down the plane, but the jet crew have been briefed: there's a crate full of ice waiting for him in the hold. He burrows into it, and when the pain turns to warmth, there's peace.

He returns to a cell in the midst of celebrations: Christmas and mission-success all rolled into one. It's clearly Murray's influence—Townsend never would have stood for it. There's lights strung in the prep room, spilling out into the halls; tinsel wrapped around the tank and the IV stands; a wreath sitting on the helmet like a crown; even a tiny tree, decorated with latex tubing and medical tools. To his amazement, the Nurse has her hair down and Harrison has hers up. The STRIKE boys are wearing ties. Everyone has a drink in their hands.

The Soldier sits in the prep chair and watches them. The drink in his own hand is pre-tank nutrient slop, but he feels a little tingle of buoyancy all the same. A new decade is almost upon them. Murray is experimenting, learning his place in the system, making loyalties. The STRIKE team has never been more cohesive, more efficient. The engineers are enthusiastically working out improvements to the cryostasis process. Even if just for a handful of moments, in this hot and boisterous place, all is right with the world.

 _Hail HYDRA_ , the Soldier thinks, and raises his glass to an unseeing room.

 

###### 1990

“Absolutely not.”

“Non-fucking-negotiable.”

“No,” the Soldier says.

Murray looks between the three of them and puts his hands on his hips. “But surely if the halo doesn't work, then it's a waste of time. And—Christ alive, the cost of _cryo—_ ”

“Care and maintenance,” the Soldier says. He flips a knife over and under in his hands so he doesn't have to look Murray in the eyes. “You can't just—it gets—”

“Bad,” Harrison finishes. She glances at the Soldier, then back to Murray. “He gets unpredictable, confused, sometimes violent. It's an avalanche of suck, and you don't want to be anywhere near the mountain, General.”

“It's fine during missions,” the Soldier clarifies, before Murray can get there himself. “It's the idleness I can't deal with.”

“Think of the asset as a shark,” the Nurse says. “If the shark stops swimming, it dies. Cryogenesis is not strictly mandatory. Busywork and daily ECT treatments are sufficient, when needs must.”

“Except,” the Soldier says meaningfully, flipping the knife high, “There aren't enough missions in the universe to warrant me being awake all the time, so...” He catches it, spreading his hands and smiling. _Sorry, General_.

“If we cancel cryo, we can afford a second STRIKE team,” Murray says, and before the Soldier can question the logic, adds, “With you at the head.”

He almost drops the knife.

The Soldier isn't often surprised, let alone blindsided, but this pronouncement leaves him with his mouth open, unable to come up with a dignified response. On either side of him, Harrison and the Nurse are equally silent. Slowly, haltingly, he manages: “You want _me_ to—you can't be—I've seen STRIKE boys laugh while they're disarming nuclear warheads and they _still_ cross the hall when they see me coming, they're terrified of me, they think I'm some kind of robot!”

Murray shrugs. “So use that.” While the Soldier is spinning his wheels, Murray elaborates: “We'll requisition through SHIELD, grab a few Alpha vets to keep them on their toes when you're not around, bish bosh. What's the problem? You get the run of the house, I get more boys on the ground being trained by the scariest bastard on the Eastern Seaboard, everybody's happy.”

The Soldier can't help but grin. “Only the Eastern Seaboard?”

“I don't know,” Murray deadpans. “I hear our sister cell in California has a very mean poodle.”

Harrison makes an outraged noise, and the tiny, delicate snort to his left can only be the Nurse. The Soldier marvels. The world has turned upside down: someone other than Harrison is giving him shit, his unquestioned leadership is on the table, and the Nurse has just expressed amusement at something other than a particularly aesthetic arrangement of shrapnel in the Soldier's person. He expects the sky to turn green any moment now. The Soldier thought he had it good under Townsend—more fool him. Townsend was only better than Zola because he let the Soldier _think_.

Murray might let him be in control.

 

☙

 

The first mission does not go well.

“But who's team leader?” someone asks, and when Murray says, “He is,” that's the Soldier's cue. He plays it safe, lets Murray take point and give the mission brief, but he counts six micro-expressions of fear, and at least two of anger. He can see them thinking: _that's_ leading us into combat? _that's_ making the calls?

Everyone gets on the jet in mufti, weapons and armor stored in the hold, and the Soldier tries to pretend that being unarmed isn't making him twitchy. He grabs a seat near the cockpit, tugging his watch cap down over his eyes and feigning sleep. It doesn't take half as long as he expects: five minutes later, and they're already muttering about him.

“Nothing upstairs.”

“We just supposed to follow him like ducklings while he stabs everything?”

“Have you _seen_ the drugs they've got him on? He's a fuckin' creep. Total psychopath.”

“You need have a personality to be a psychopath. Charisma. He hasn't got any of that.”

“Nah, you're thinking of serial killers.”

“Same difference.”

“Actually—”

“Fuck off.”

“Point is, Townsend never would've stood for this shit. He knew where the asset belonged. Under the fucking _ice_.”

“Hey, we never would have got anywhere with that situation in Chile if it hadn't been for him.”

“That mean he should be running STRIKE, Sherlock?”

“Jaysus,” someone drawls. “Listen to you guys. If you want _my_ opinion—”

“How much longer are we gonna be in the air with it?”

“Two hours, thirty-eight minutes, barring explosions,” the Soldier says, settling down further into his seat. “And it's going to feel twice as long if you all spend it gossiping like old women.”

He immediately regrets it. The tension skyrockets; he can hear breathing going shallow all around him, and prays they're not going to jump him, that he's not going to have to take out a jet full of kids and call for evac before the mission's even started. Moderately difficult to explain to Murray, that. He opens his eyes under the wool, ready for the first move.

Right then, Paglia—Alpha vet, grizzled, unflappable—says, “Hey, Lucas, how'd it go at your sister's wedding?” and someone replies, “Oh, great! She did it the Chinese way, right, so everything was red—” and the Soldier could kiss their boots.

Murray's got them a hotel to themselves, with one of their own agents at the front desk. Cutting cryo must have afforded the cell a lot more than just a second STRIKE team, the Soldier thinks, amused. It's a beautiful old building in the middle of town, overlooking a bustling square framed with olive trees. Over the course of one block, the Soldier hears Hungarian, Turkish, Italian, Serbian, and Czech.

He's less happy when he finds out he's rooming with the youngest member of STRIKE Beta.

He hopes it's not a joke on Murray's part. Shove the moody old assassin in a room with some fresh-faced Quantico graduate still in the honeymoon phase, stars in his eyes for HYDRA. Worse, the Soldier thinks this is one of the SHIELD recruits, which is damned dangerous. If the kid's come lately from an organization like SHIELD, putting him face-to-face with HYDRA's terrifying and—in their eyes, as he understands it—highly illegal weapon could be a brazen security risk. Turncoats can turn back; first allegiance is sometimes the hardest to break.

The Soldier is smoking on the balcony when the kid comes out.

The kid—and _god_ he's young, they'll be sending him on missions with infants, next, carrying babies while he shoots people—stops dead in the doorway, like he either wasn't expecting anyone to be out here, or like he wasn't expecting the weapon to be off its leash.

The kid finally decides on “Sir” and the wisdom of going back inside.

“Get out here,” the Soldier sighs. “It's a free country.”

The kid stops with one foot on either side of the jamb. “Is it, sir?”

The Soldier shrugs. “Is for us.”

The kid looks like he's fighting an internal battle. He takes his weight off one foot, puts it down; shifts his jaw. And then— _brave_ little cuss—he stalks over and plucks the cigarette from the Soldier's slack fingers.

“Those things'll kill you,” the Soldier says. “Are you even over majority?”

A lift of the chin. “Yes.”

“I don't believe you, but seeing as how I don't know what majority age is these days—”

The kid blows smoke over the balcony and makes a face. “These are terrible.”

“Yeah, well, they aren't mine.”

“You stole them?”

“Kid, do I look like I've got a lot of disposable income?”

The kid looks at him for a whole _minute_ without saying anything. Finally, tentatively: “They didn't say you were...”

Silence.

The Soldier raises his eyebrows.

“A _person_ ,” the kid blurts, like he's expecting to be punished for it.

The Soldier snorts. “Are _you_ ever in the wrong department. You want to know things, get the hell out of STRIKE and into Intelligence. Operatives are the last to know anything.”

“Like you?”

“I'm not an operative,” the Soldier says, with friendly teeth. “I'm the Asset.”

An expression flickers bullet-quick across the kid's face, some complex reaction the Soldier isn't able to parse. His pupils are enormous. Fear? Drugs? _Do_ they drug the STRIKE boys?

Before he has the opportunity to ask, there's a knock on the door. A very shy, very young maid with two covered trays: lamb sausage, he discovers, and yeasty bread stuffed with cabbage and sharp cheese, and a thick peppery pea soup. The kid inhales his food like he hasn't eaten in a week, but the Soldier sits on the edge of his bed and chews slowly. It takes him a few days to get used to large meals outside of Base; the nutrient slop makes his stomach shrink. He spreads out maps on the bedspread, plotting out entry and exit plans, brainstorming contingencies while he eats.

After a failed attempt to find an English television station and a lot of thumb-twiddling, the kid pulls out a paperback that's seen better days, and the Soldier breathes a sigh of relief. It can entertain itself! Glory be.

Except he takes his attention off the kid for ten seconds, it feels like, and when he blinks out of the needle-eye of concentration, the kid is standing in front of him. No: the kid's on his _knees_.

The Soldier is frozen in place as the kid's hands come up onto his thighs, warring internally between the survival instinct that keeps him still as death when a technician's hands are on him, and the desire to put the kid in a chokehold. This is—a sex thing, he thinks, bewildered. The kid looks up at him with an expression that's half chutzpah, half pleading; brazen. He doesn't look aroused. He looks like a man walking to his hanging.

It's the kid's fingers on the Soldier's belt buckle that break his paralysis. He snaps one hand up to fist in the kid's hair, dragging his neck back, arching his spine. The kid's hands are still reaching out to touch even as he's bowing backwards. The Soldier gives a vicious twist of his hand, unbalancing the kid on his knees, and that stubborn expression finally cracks into something like fear. The Soldier's not proud to see it.

“Who told you to do this?” he demands. Because that's what this has to be, doesn't it? One of the boys, one of the ones who hate him, or one of the ones who love putting raw recruits through hazing pranks in the locker room, the kind of juvenile shit the Soldier doesn't have the authority to break up. Yet. He can now. Agent Toland, maybe. Agent Maurier. Whoever it is, he'll string the guy up by his fucking toes. No pranks in STRIKE, not on his watch. They have to trust each other.

But: “No one!” the kid says, panting. The Soldier tightens his fingers a fraction more, and gets bared teeth and a flinty look for his troubles. “No one, no one made me—I wanted to.”

“Wanted to what?”

“Make you feel good,” the kid bites out, and the Soldier almost lets go in surprise. “Paglia says they just take you in and out of the freezer and use that machine to mess with your brain, and it seems like you don't get anything nice, and—I just thought I'd—”

“Do something nice,” the Soldier finishes tiredly.

“You don't have to look.” Pleading: almost desperate. “You can pretend I'm a girl, it's fine, it doesn't make you a—”

The Soldier lets go of the kid's hair, and the kid sits back on his heels, breathing hard, his hands still gripping the Soldier's knees. Not asking, but not moving, either.

“I'm having a little trouble believing that,” the Soldier says. “Looks like you're fixing to pass out.”

“Well, you're a really fucking _scary guy_ , okay? Just 'cause I'm _cautious_ doesn't mean I don't—”

“Prove it,” the Soldier says, and the kid goes still.

When he reaches for the Soldier's belt, the Soldier grabs his wrists and shakes his head. “Almost,” the Soldier says. He taps his lips once, twice.

The kid looks like his birthday's come early. He rises up onto his knees, leaning up, reaching, and the Soldier does him the favor of bending down a little. Shit, he thinks: this is a fucking minefield, this poor bairn's been around the block a few times and nobody ever asked him to do it nice. The kid tries rough, at first, and when the Soldier doesn't bite back, he gentles his mouth, covers his teeth. Coaxing. The Soldier relaxes, moving into it like he's done it before—he must have done, he realizes, before everything. He must have, to know this. It's good. He can't finish it, can't go through with it, but it's nice to be touched, however briefly. It's nice to be touched by someone who isn't dressing him or stitching him up or repairing him. The kid's hands come up tentative to rest on the Soldier's waist, his thumbs rubbing circles just above the Soldier's hipbones. Soft lips. It's nice.

The Soldier sighs, and dampens the kiss, pulling back. The kid tries to chase his lips, but the Soldier rests his metal fingers against the kid's sternum. Not pressing, just making a wall.

“I can't,” he says.

“They don't have to know.”

“No,” the Soldier says slowly, “I _can't_. Chemical castration.”

“Fuckin' _why_?”

“Arousal is a distraction in the field,” the Soldier says, rote, unsure who he's quoting. If the kid hears a little chastising between the lines, that's his business.

The kid groans hugely and flops down between the Soldier's feet, half-stretching his legs. His pale hair spreads on the blanket; his spine warm against the Soldier's calf. The Soldier feels a little surge of—what? Protectiveness? Fondness? This dumb kid just wanted to do something simple and good for someone else, someone he thought was a person, someone he thought deserved nice things. There's a big heart beating in that chest. Murray can use that, focus it, turn it into fervor for the greater mission. The kid could be a STRIKE leader someday. If he learns some focus.

The Soldier threads his fingers through the kid's hair, and hears a very quiet sigh.

“Go to sleep, kid,” the Soldier says, and the kid says, “Okay.”

 

☙

 

The Soldier doesn't sleep on missions. It doesn't feel safe to be unconscious outside of base, now that cryo's off the table. Sometimes drugs are necessary to stay awake, but other times, it's easy to keep alert for a few days at a stretch, especially when the mission is complex. Either way, the Soldier tends to get into a bed and lay on his back, arms at his sides like he's in the cryo chamber, blankets pulled up to his chest. It's partially for his own comfort, but mostly so that any unplanned interruptions (or, god help him, unplanned roommates) don't result in awkwardness. People sleep; it distresses them if someone doesn't.

He's not expecting the kid to crawl into his bed.

He has a momentary impulse to kick the kid off the mattress, throw him to the floor, be mean about it, but he overcomes the temptation out of curiosity. He wants to see what the kid will do if he doesn't move. The kid eels under the blankets and presses up against the Soldier's side, already still by the time the Soldier decides to lift his right arm and lay it behind the kid so it doesn't lose circulation in the night. The kid, apparently satisfied, flings his own arm over the Soldier's abdomen and falls asleep almost immediately.

It feels familiar.

The Soldier knows he's never slept in a bed like this with another person, at least not after he got the arm, so it must be something from before. A body-memory. Did he have a family? A lover? It's too abstract; he can't feel a connection to it. He can't imagine letting another person in like that. Having a life beyond—this. Having a home. But he must have done, once.

It bothers him that it remains. Zola's shoddy efforts, burning out his past improperly. Well, he asks himself: what do you expect, from medical work done in the 1950's? He's a broken machine. He's not made for this. No wonder Zola preferred cutting him open to sending him on missions. He's a loose cannon, he could snap at any time. It's not an encouraging thought.

He listens to the kid's even breathing, and goes over the plan again.

 

☙

 

To his horror, the Soldier wakes up. Wakes up, because he managed to fall asleep, even with tactics to consider, even with a human being plastered against his side like a barnacle. He's not just broken—he's slipping. Hell. The kid shoots him worshipful glances all through the morning: taking turns in the tiny bathroom, eating, gearing up. He tries to ignore all of it and focus his mind on the mission. He can't let anything distract him the way the kid's distracting himself.

The kid's gonna die, the Soldier thinks tiredly.

It takes longer than he expects to get everyone up and ready, a combination of pounding on doors, yanking off sheets, and in one case, tipping the mattress and dumping the agent in question onto the floor. Everyone but Paglia and Forester—who are already awake, thank god—seem surprised by the invasion. Did they not expect the Fist of HYDRA to be a pill about roll call? The kid follows like a lost puppy until the Soldier orders him to bring up a couple carafes of coffee. It's a mess, but he manages.

The Soldier isn't normally a team player, isn't accustomed to looking out for other operatives when he's working, but he can learn. He remembers the police station, the way he made a hollow for himself, sliding between the messy desks and the water cooler like he was born into that space. It feels instinctual. When one of the boys lays a joke on the sand, the Soldier lobs it back, light and easy. Another agent has a gun prone to jamming, so the Soldier fixes it on the march. Once they reach ground zero, he has the grudging acknowledgment of at least half of STRIKE, if he counts the seniors. Paglia's and Forester's quiet acquiescence keeps the muttering boys in line.

When the bullets start coming down like hail, the moderate good will he's accrued is just about the only thing they've got going for them. That, and the Soldier himself.

No stimulants in his arm, but he doesn't need them. He'd prefer to be up high with a sniper rifle, but he doesn't have to be. All he needs is a knife in his left hand and a pistol in his right. He's a whirlwind. By the time STRIKE has one building cleared, the Soldier has emptied a block. He circles, out and back, out and back. He appears among them bloodspattered; he ghosts away. The comms ring with sound. He doesn't remember working in a team, but it feels as natural as breathing, extending himself beyond the mission parameters, protective of his team. He tosses grenades back at the men who throw them. It's a dance, and everyone his partner.

Overconfidence almost compromises the mission. Hand-to-hand with a sniper on the radio tower, the Soldier's reflexes a millisecond too slow, and he's tumbling over the rail. Three stories down, stunned, ears ringing, gunfire like kettle drums, he can just barely hear the comms going mental.

“Shit!”

“Asset down! Asset down!”

“Asset is not down,” the Soldier snarls, smacking his comm, crab-scrambling unsteadily to his feet, “But he'll gladly take a nap if someone can just shoot that fucking—” A scream from above him, and a body drops. “ _—thank_ you.”

Ten seconds to catch his breath, another ten to assess damage, but he's mobile. He kills the next one with his bare hands to appease his flattened pride. He takes two bullets meant for the boy whose gun was jamming, did jam again; one pings off his metal shoulder, and the other punches under his collarbone, jamming up under the scapula. He can feel it grind unhappily the next time he throws a knife. The pain is distant, unimportant. The thing on his face isn't a grin, but it might as well be. He feels rapturously alive.

Which is, of course, the moment the bombs go off.

 

☙

 

When the firefight peters out, all enemy operatives dead or on the run, the team is spread evenly across the town. Call and response on comms is patchy at best, and at least three of them have lost their earpieces. Paglia reports one death: Lucas, the boy whose sister wore red to her wedding. DuQuette calls in on someone else's comm: Forester isn't dead yet, but he's going to be. The Soldier, attempting to carefully break into an abandoned insurgent van when he hears, rips the door off in childish frustration. He feels something tear in his shoulder and snarls. The kid barely gets out of the way in time.

Because that's who he's stuck with. The kid.

What a surprise.

“What're we looking for?” the kid asks.

“Intel, weapons, interesting tech, anything that—” The Soldier grunts and rips the driver's seat out of its housing. “Anything that might make this trip worthwhile, because the way I see it, that was just one big collective piss into the ocean, and we've got fuck-all to show for it. Check the glove box.”

The kid rifles through papers, maps, tissues. A container of Tic-Tacs falls to the floor. “What _are_ we doing here?”

“Classified.”

The kid knees the glove box closed. “Oh, come _on—_ ”

“Told you, get into Intelligence.”

“ _You're_ not in Intelligence.”

“I'm not in anything,” the Soldier says, distracted by a floor panel that doesn't look standard. The reward for his curiosity is a safe. He rips the door off. The kid leans over the seat as the Soldier pulls out six bags of white pills, two bags of faintly pink powder, and a Mobira car phone with a few raunchy, peeling stickers on the side.

“Drugs?”

“Probably.” He sniffs the bags, but they're too well-sealed. “Not enough for a smuggling operation. Could be a sample, or for personnel use.” He can't say how he knows, but it feels right. He thumbs his comm: “Asset to STRIKE: all units, be advised, unknown contained substances found in insurgent vehicle. Search vehicles in your sector if convenient. Otherwise, meet under the radio tower at 1400 hours. Over.”

The moment he releases his comm, the kid hauls him bodily into the alley.

The Soldier drops the bags and slams the kid into the wall, running on adrenaline and instinct, listening for motion. He thought the zone was clear. More operatives? More bombs?

“You should run,” the kid whispers into his ear.

The Soldier whips around to stare at him.

“You should run,” the kid says again, his eyes bright, wide, but not scared. “They don't know we're together, I'll tell them we got separated, you could be halfway across Europe before they even realized you were gone. You could get out.”

“And why,” the Soldier says incredulously, “Should I do that?”

“Because they treat you like shit!” the kid exclaims. He spreads his hands like it should be obvious. “It's not right, it's not _fucking right_ what they do to you, you're a person—”

“I am _not—_ ”

“You're a human being, you're—”

The kid stops at whatever he sees; it can't be nice.

“Shoot me in the face, watch me spit the bullet back at you, then tell me that,” the Soldier snarls. He pins the kid's neck against the brick with his forearm and watches his breath come up short. “I can skin a man in less than two minutes. Is that what humans do? Huh? I'm the _Asset_.”

“You weren't born like that,” the kid says: thin, raspy. His fingernails scratch at the metal without leaving so much as a smudge. It's a cue for the Soldier to ease up, but he doesn't.

“Who says I wasn't? You hear about those mutants on the news, teleporting, setting fires, killing people?” He feels gritty with it, something dirty and molten sitting on his chest, burning him. “They say even being around them is wrong. You like that, don't you? Miscegenation, is that what they call it? You liked it when I—”

The kid strikes out at him with an elbow, a knee, and the Soldier leans full-bodied against him, pinning all of his limbs, the kid wild-eyed—both of them wild-eyed, he's sure. The kid shrinks like a cowed dog, looking away, showing his belly. The Soldier leans back.

When the kid tries to reach for the Soldier's belt, he slams the kid's wrists against the brickwork.

“The hell you playin' at, punk?” comes out of his mouth, and then they're staring at each other, shocky-frozen. The kid's eyes are saucer-wide, his throat imprinted with a series of overlapping lines from the plates on the Soldier's arm. It's going to bruise, badly. The Soldier squeezes his eyes shut for a count of three. When he opens them, he says, “What do you think you're doing?” and his voice is his own again: unremarkable, unaccented, steady.

“I still want to—” the kid starts, and the Soldier grabs the kid's hand, puts it right on his crotch, where he isn't hard at all.

“I don't,” the Soldier says.

The kid sags. Something defensive comes into his face: anger, a little disgust. When he tries to scramble away, the Soldier grabs his shoulder and gives him a little shake. “Hey. I told you, it's the—”

“Drugs, I know.” The kid grimaces. “I just thought...”

“I know,” he says, not unkindly. “Blow to the ego, right? Hot shit like you, you should be able to get an old man's blood up. Well, sorry.”

“Okay,” the kid says, dull, and then his head comes up suddenly, fear back in his eyes. “You aren't going to report me, are you?”

The Soldier shakes his head. “If _you'd_ tried to desert? Maybe, I don't know. I'm new to this gig. Don't think I won't keep an eye on you, though. That's practically treason, what you said—not everybody's going to be as understanding as me.”

“But it's awful. You _gotta_ want out. I thought they might have something on you, you know, or they'll kill you if you try to escape, nobody could want to live like that.”

“There's worse things they can do than kill me,” the Soldier says.

That, apparently, makes it worse. The kid looks horrified. “So _why_? Why do you stay? The things they do to you—”

“I asked them to. Most of it, anyway.”

The kid stares. He shakes his head. “Man,” he says. “Maybe you're not human after all.”

The Soldier realizes he's still half-pinning the kid to the wall, and takes a judicious step back, and then another. He examines his uniform, adjusts what the kid's disturbed, checks his weapons. The kid, after a moment, does the same. “What's your name, anyway?” the Soldier asks.

The kid makes a face. “You forgot already? You're _team leader_.”

“I have memory problems, fuck off.”

“Kidd. Thomas Kidd—what? Why are you laughing? Why're you fucking laughing?”

 

☙

 

Forester is still hanging on when the Soldier finds them. Paglia and DuQuette are sitting with him, heads close; the rest of STRIKE is clustered on the other side of the room. Kidd goes to the boys, but the Soldier goes to Paglia. He hears whispering start up behind him and ignores it.

“How is he?” the Soldier asks. Like he can't see the trail of blood where they dragged him into the room. Forester's thighs and pelvis are a pile of shredded meat, and his organs have been tucked back inside his body with more respect than care. It's incredible that he's still alive, more incredible yet that his eyes are clear, despite what must be immeasurable pain.

“Waiting on you,” Forester answers, sandpaper-rough, before Paglia can say anything. “Protocol. Only team leader can make the call.”

“So you've been—oh, _fuck_ that.” The Soldier sits at Forester's side and takes his hand. Paglia shifts to give him more room. “That's a stupid fucking rule, Forester, I'm changing it when we get back to base.”

“Oh.” Forester coughs wetly. “Well, good.”

The Soldier takes out his pistol and his best knife. “You have a preference? I'd offer CO2, but getting car exhaust all the way in here is going to be a bitch. Sorry.”

“Oh, fuck,” says one of the boys behind them. Someone shushes him. There's rustling; the Soldier can't tell if they're moving away or coming to watch.

“Whatever's surest,” Forester says.

The Soldier puts the knife away, and rests the barrel of his pistol under Forester's chin, angled just right. “This'll take out the brain stem. You won't feel a thing. Promise.”

Forester closes his eyes. “Good old Romero.”

“Three second warning,” the Soldier says, more for the benefit of the boys than Forester, whose face has settled into the beneficent laxness of a man who knows the pain's almost over. He pulls the trigger.

DuQuette sighs. Paglia crosses himself. Behind them, someone throws up.

 

☙

 

Murray's just as upset about the deaths as the Soldier anticipated. Getting attached already—it's a bad business. He seems cheered by the pills and powder they found, though, and the chemists are making excited noises about experiments and implementation. The STRIKE team is off filing their reports, but the Soldier has never needed to write a report before, and wouldn't know how to start if someone gave him a pen. He waits in the prep room for Murray's judgment: good, bad, indifferent, no more STRIKE leadership, execution.

“This,” Murray says, when he comes in an hour later, “Is the weirdest goddamn after-action report of my whole goddamn career, and that's keeping in mind the time back in '72 when Agent Burroughs turned in ten pages of 'fuck you'.”

The Soldier has to rise to the bait: “Whose is it?”

“Tommy's,” Murray says, and then clarifies, “Agent Kidd.” The Soldier goes cold, but Murray doesn't notice. _Oh, fuck_ , the Soldier thinks, _he's gone and done it, he's gone and told Murray he tried to help me escape_. Murray drags an office chair over to the halo and sits heavily, scrubbing one hand over his beard, staring at the report. “He's tried to work in some kind of—sexual harassment charge? Against himself? In regards to _you_?”

The Soldier puts his face in his hands. “Yeah, that's—” Murray looks up, and the Soldier fights back a wince, rubbing the bridge of his nose hard enough to chafe. “—not entirely inaccurate.”

“Okay,” Murray says slowly. “You wanna back that one up and give me a minute-by-minute?”

The Soldier does his best. If he gives Murray the idea that Kidd felt pressured into the situation by persons unknown, instead of because he wanted to get down on his knees as a public service, it makes everyone look a little better, so that's exactly what he does. Still, nothing in his verbal report is flattering, from the way he failed to handle the roommate, to the encounter itself, to the whole clusterfuck the mission turned into, with two good agents dead for no progress and a few bags of miscellaneous chemicals.

Murray is silent a long time. The Soldier waits.

“You think he's a fruit, son?” Murray asks at last.

“No,” the Soldier says. He's lying; he doesn't know what that means. What he does know is that any other answer to that question will get someone hurt. He doesn't know how he knows this. It's a complex feeling, but cold and distant. He can't get a grip on it.

“Agent Kidd will get a talking-to about procedure and mission protocol,” Murray decides. “I won't punish him, since it seems pretty clear he wasn't trying to coerce anything out of you. I hear his combat actions were exemplary.”

“I'd rate them above average,” the Soldier agrees. “But, hey, do you know what was below average? Intelligence. We had no idea what we were walking into, Murray, and it's a goddamned miracle we only lost two men. I don't care what you have to cut to put more manpower into intel, but you're going to lose STRIKE Beta if it happens again.”

“Point made and received,” Murray says. “Did you have any leadership problems?”

“Grumbling. They mostly shut up after...” and he trails off. Murray turns to see what's caught his attention: the Nurse, in the doorway, arms crossed.

“Agent Davies informed me that you were shot,” the Nurse says. “Twice. Is there any particular reason why you failed to report it?”

“Once, ma'am,” the Soldier says. “The first one bounced off.”

“Get on the gurney,” she says, dragging the nearest crash cart over. She sounds bland as ever, but he hasn't injured himself in a while, and she's probably elated to cut him open. “I'm certain you can finish giving your report while I dig it out of you.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I notice that nobody's asked me whether I'm comfortable _receiving_ a report from a man bleeding on a gurney,” Murray informs the ceiling.

“Get used to it,” the Nurse advises.

 

☙

 

Being awake is terrible. The Soldier was right: there aren't enough missions to keep him from slipping down the well. He goes with STRIKE Beta to Cuba, Poland, Mali, and then three weeks of nothing, dragging on his brain like sandpaper. The Nurse increases his ECT to twice-daily, tries combinations of sedatives that make him feel tired and fidgety instead of just fidgety. He cleans the armory right down to the ground, scratches gouges in his arm so deep the Nurse threatens to tape boxing gloves on his hands, and then he climbs the walls.

Fragments of memory come to him when he's pacing restless, junk without context, upsetting and disorienting. He almost puts Andrev through the wall when he gets a flash of Zola bending over him and smiling, the glare on his glasses making him look pie-eyed, robotic; his face strangely unlined. After a flash he's certain isn't really his—looking down at a pair of hands too soft, too unmarked to be his own, lifting a box full of books, the smell of cigarettes in his pocket—he breaks the rules and leaves Base, running laps around the inside perimeter of the compound until he passes out. Once they drag him inside, the Nurse looks at him for five minutes, and then goes to yell at Murray for an hour. Or as close as she ever gets to yelling, at any rate.

The most exciting thing that happens is in the locker room, when some Alpha chest-thumper drowning in his own testosterone comes at the Soldier in the showers. The Soldier isn't sure if it's a play for his body or a round of gladiatorial combat, but he fastballs a bar of soap and gives the agent a concussion before he can find out. Alpha returns to posturing and suspicion. Paglia despairs.

After that, Murray fills up the Soldier's idle hours with training the newer STRIKE boys, the ones who haven't been breaking necks for ten years in Alpha. They're either derisive or terrified of him until they aren't, and the Soldier's not dumb; he's seen Kidd talk to more than one of them, animated, enthusiastic. Extolling the Asset's virtues, he has to assume. Regular missions finally crawl through the tangle of bureaucracy they've been trapped in since Townsend's death. Sometimes with STRIKE, sometimes alone. They're often below his skills, and intelligence continues to be terrible, but it's better than nothing. It's better, at the end of the day, than being an empty shell.

He talks to Murray, sometimes, in Murray's office or on the grounds. The Soldier thought Zola and Townsend loved the sound of their own voices—Murray, hell! Murray could wake the dead. But Murray's easier, somehow; less concerned about rank, more amiable. Simpler, insofar as anyone is simple. People like Murray—like Harrison, like anybody with a life outside, he supposes—are like cities, in all their shades, their light places and their darknesses, their weird complexities. Preferences and creature comforts. It's like hearing a foreign language, trying to make sense of it all. You hear scraps, syllables, the cadence, and you think you understand, but you don't.

The Soldier isn't a city, he decides: he's an empty house on a long, long road.

Simple.

But Murray, _Murray_ ; he's interesting. Here's Murray, in his khakis and his old combat boots, white hairs on his cuffs (probably a dog), and his endless cups of peppermint tea, making him and the Nurse and the Soldier the only ones on Base who don't practically hook themselves up to a caffeine drip. Here's Murray—but what is Murray, exactly? The Soldier can't construct a picture in his head. He doesn't have the resources. What do people _do_ when they leave? How do they use the miscellany in their homes? How do they deal with not working?

Murray's a coward, the Soldier decides at last. It's not unique, not really helpful, because at the end of the day, everyone's a coward for one reason or another. Zola was afraid of death, of dying, of disease. Townsend was afraid of fame. You find out for sure what kind of coward someone is under duress. The ones who talk are afraid of death. The ones who don't, that's different; that's fear of someone else's death, fear of punishment, fear of a terrible legacy. It's a start: Murray's a coward, and he's afraid of being forgotten. Afraid of being no one. When the Soldier realizes that, he thinks: well. No wonder Murray's let the Asset off its leash.

They're walking the perimeter, admiring the wildflowers rampaging across the open land between the fence and the forest. Murray knows a lot about flowers; has a garden at home that he putters around in on weekends, or whenever he can. He babies an ever-changing pile of annuals and awkward shrubby things, and a ghost apple tree that produces the most revolting fruit in the universe and refuses to die no matter how little attention he gives it. Whatever flower the Soldier points at, Murray knows its name. He's delighted that the Soldier's interested. The Soldier can't imagine he finds too many kindred spirits among the STRIKE boys.

“They say it keeps you young, gardening,” Murray says. “I don't know, I feel awful old when I'm trying to haul these bones up after a three-hour pruning argument with the rhododendron.”

“Well, shit, I guess it'll keep me immortal,” the Soldier says, and Murray laughs.

When they hit the gates and make another circuit, Murray says, “The code boys hacked through some more of Zola's notes this morning, did you hear? He brought you over in '51, said you came from Russia. No offense, boyo, but you don't look Russian to me.”

“I speak it,” the Soldier says doubtfully. “I think.” He tries: “ _Ya plokho ponimayu po-russki_.”

Murray makes a face. “Sounds like a tiger with a head cold.”

Thinking of the ravine, the snow, the drawing in his pocket: “Did the notes say who ran me before Zola? Who I worked for?”

“Not a word,” says Murray.

The call comes down from on high: STRIKE teams are to be shuffled for maximum efficiency, to make sure no single member is relying on any other single member for cohesiveness. Agent Maurier and Agent Somers switch to Beta; Agent Schwartz and the irrepressible Agent Kidd switch to Alpha. The kid seems happy to have a new crowd to spread the good word to, but as far as the Soldier can see, he's getting preached at as much as he's preaching. It's a relief, though: the fervor’s got him. They won't be losing this one back to SHIELD.

A week later, when he's passing Murray's office, the Soldier hears a great loud “Ha!” from inside, and hip-checks the door open. Murray's holding a transcript and laughing, his Santa Claus cheeks bright red, tears in his eyes.

“Surveillance reports are never that funny,” the Soldier says.

“No, no, this is beautiful,” Murray gasps, and pulls himself together. “Someone's decided to nickname you, son. Like a serial killer. You know, how the news gives murderers cute names to identify them? They're calling you _the Winter Soldier_. Eh? What do you think? Some cleverdick CIA desk jockey who fancies himself a scholar came up with that one. Oh, lord have mercy.” He wipes his eyes.

“I don't get it,” the Soldier says, leaning against the desk. Murray hands him the report when he reaches for it.

“ 'These are the times that try men's souls?' No?” Murray sits, linking his fingers behind his head. “It's Thomas Paine. Summer soldiers and sunshine patriots—they run when the going gets tough, but winter soldiers see it through. Get it? You've been seeing it through since the fifties. You're the toughest, loyalest soldier who ever lived. You like that? I think it's awful. Perfectly awful. I'm going to send somebody a fruit basket.”

The Soldier doesn't know how it spreads, but the next thing he knows, STRIKE Beta is using a new codename in the field, and it's not long before one of the boys slips up and calls him that in the locker room. It's all over when Murray bellows “Winter!” down the hall. Even the hard-asses on Alpha lose their collective minds. It's a joke; it's a nightmare. It's something you'd call a cat.

“I can bell you, if you like, just so's we can hear you coming,” Murray says.

The Soldier only punches him a little.

 

☙

 

The Soldier is showing Davies how to escape from a front choke hold when the shouting starts. At first he thinks it's only the boys rough-housing, or watching a game on one of the smuggled televisions, but crashing joins the shouting, and then: a garbled scream. The Soldier is out of the room before Davies gets the safety off his gun. In the hall, it's clear where the sounds are coming from: a whole party of STRIKE boys are clustering in the locker room doorway. He hears cursing, struggling bodies, a terrible meaty noise from inside.

“Fuck's _sake_ ,” the Soldier snarls, elbowing his way into the room, “Can we stop _killing_ each oth—Jesus!”

It's Murray, sprawled on the floor like a mannequin dropped off a roof. His face is a pulpy smear of meat and bone splinters, oddly flattened, as if someone stamped his skull in a press. The obvious culprit, a wickedly spiked set of brass knuckles smeared with blood and brain matter, lays on the ground two feet away. The Soldier realizes the background din isn't being produced by a roomful of panicked soldiers, but by Agent Crozier, frothing and shrieking under the weight of two STRIKE agents. Amplified tenfold by echoing tile, the sound makes his ears ring.

“Shut him up, will you?” the Soldier says, and ignores the dull thump that follows. In the sudden silence, he hears a wet, horrible wheeze.

“Oh, you poor bastard,” the Soldier groans. He kneels down next to what's left of Murray's head. “Why couldn't you give up and die, huh?”

Murray bubbles at the ceiling, blind. The Soldier hopes he's not conscious. Thankfully, it looks like he isn't. Most of Murray's frontal lobe is hanging off the brass knuckles. The Soldier sighs and reaches for his belt.

He's cleaning arterial blood off his tac knife when the Nurse pushes her way past the whispering boys crowding the doorway. She looks at Murray, and then at the Soldier, and then at Crozier, being carried from the room by two agents who stagger under his unconscious bulk. She gives all of them the same dispassionate glance.

“Witnesses?” she asks, looking at the Soldier.

“It was Crozier, ma'am,” one of the boys says. “He just snapped. He was screaming about our plans, how we all had it in for him. Murray got in his face, ma'am.”

“Provoking?”

“No ma'am. Trying to sweet-talk him down, more like.”

The Nurse's mouth thins. “May I have corroboration?”

Four half-dressed operatives make noises of assent, including DuQuette. The Nurse nods, curt, and dismisses the lot of them.

She grabs the Soldier's arm when he tries to leave. “Help me get this onto a gurney,” she says.

Murray's head lolls over the metal arm when the Soldier lifts him, the gape of his throat still oozing sluggishly. The Soldier arranges slack limbs gently, as best he can, but there's still something fundamentally broken about the way the body lies. The Nurse makes a _tsk_ ing noise through her teeth and touches Murray's orbital bone, sticking straight up like a flag. “How messy. We will have to cremate him.”

It's this, and not the wet sprawl of Murray's body, that makes it finally hit him.

Murray's _dead_.

“Oh fuck,” the Soldier whispers.

“Calm yourself,” the Nurse says. Because she knows him, she doesn't misunderstand: it's not the body that's disturbed him. “And don't be vulgar. I will make every effort to ensure that Murray's replacement will be a much more competent man.”

The Soldier doesn't ask how she'll accomplish this. It's her; he'd believe anything. He forces himself to be calm. On her instruction, he pushes the gurney into the elevator. It goes down, past Downstairs, past the labs, and into the basement. He's never been down here before, and where he expects a bustle of activity, the constant destruction of bodies used up by the geneticists, it's still and undisturbed. Quiet, under the roar of the furnace. Concrete floor, concrete walls, just like a bunker, although no bunker he's ever been in has had a crematory. It's big enough to incinerate four bodies at once.

“I will undress the body,” the Nurse says. “Go down the hall, past the office, enter the second door on the left, and bring me a box. They come unfolded.”

The Soldier brings the long pieces of cardboard back to the furnace room and starts to assemble them. Halfway through the bottom piece, a tremor hits his flesh hand, and a cold sweat breaks out on his temples. He presses his hands to his face, hard, trying to stop the tremors. There was blood on his hands, he realizes. He must be covered in it now.

“Everything will be fine,” the Nurse says, uninflected. “Things have changed before, and they will change again. The only constant you can trust is death.”

The Soldier focuses on her flat voice. He tries to breathe.

“I put Dr. Zola down when his pain became undignified,” she says. “I shipped General Duncan's body home. I took Colonel Townsend's remains down to the morgue, one bag at a time, because there was no one to help me. There will be another after General Murray, and I will perform his autopsy too.” The Soldier removes his hands in time to catch her looking at him. She doesn't quite smile, but her crow's feet deepen. “The hydra has many heads, and it is always hungry.”

“You can't know that.” Her certainty frightens him; it's the first time in years he's felt afraid. “Murray's replacement could last as long as Townsend, or longer.”

“I will be here,” the Nurse says. “I will always be here. When you finally come up against something you can't kill, I will be here for you too.”

“I can't die.” He doesn't bother with the fiction, not with her. She's reached down into the wet red meat of him, seen him pinned open on the table like a frog, watched Zola bleed him out.

The Nurse folds Murray's wet shirt with crisp, neat motions.

“Neither can I,” she says.

The Soldier goes very, very still.

“You were Dr. Zola's only success,” the Nurse says. Her small hands making quick work of folding Murray's trousers. “Did you never wonder what happened to his failures?”

Bodies, other bodies, no more than skeletons, sores in their mouths, losing their teeth. Waiting in the cages with bee-sting hypodermic blooms in the crook of their elbows, on the back of their hands, the stink of the furnaces running all through the night, boys with dark uniforms and white—

No, no, he won't remember this, it's not his, it didn't _happen to him_ —

The subjects. The numbered men. Safe ground: they were his responsibility.

Denying the flashes: “I assumed there were others, somewhere, there must have—” He manages to get his feet under him and comes to her, stands on the other side of the gurney. Murray, he notes, has a blurry old tattoo of an anchor on his right forearm; the text in a ribbon below it has been feathered into incomprehensibility by time. Murray must have been in the Navy when he was young. It hurts, abstractly and selfishly, not to know. The Soldier looks over the gurney at the Nurse, who looks serenely back. He says: “I thought they all died.”

“Clearly,” she says, “We did not.”

The cages rear up. He stops himself from gagging by a thread. He grabs the edge of the table, suddenly desperate. “Tell me your name.”

The expression on her face is almost, almost a smile. “What makes you think I have one? You don't.”

“Please.” He'll beg if he has to. He hasn't begged since—he hasn't begged in a very long time. He'll do it, for this. “ _Please_.”

She looks at the elevator, and then back to him, laying one finger against her lips, raising her eyebrows. It's so quietly mischievous, so out of character, he feels like he's been punched in the stomach. She crooks her finger. He bends down, then down further, realizing he's never been so close to her, never realized how small she is, how solid. She smells like cotton and ozone and isopropyl alcohol, sharp and too clean. He should have noticed: the strength that doesn't match her frame, doesn't match her age. He should have _seen_.

The Nurse leans over the body. She takes the Soldier's chin in her hand, blood on the pad of her thumb, blood on her left cheek. She pulls him closer. She whispers her name into his ear.

His breath hitches out of him. He feels all of a sudden exhausted. Tired beyond telling, weary as an old man. Older than the earth. He drops his head to Murray's lifeless knee, shuddering, shuddering. Her hand flutters over his hair like a benediction.

“Do you wish you had one?” the Nurse asks.

“No,” he says, “No—” but for a sliver of a moment, he wishes he was the kind of creature that could.

She allows him a few moments to—what? Commune with Murray's empty shell? Grieve?—is that what he's doing? Grieving? He knows, abstractly, that their days of talking about gardens are over, that Murray will never laugh at that stupid nickname again, but he's finding it hard to hold onto the feeling. Or, perhaps he's feeling a loss of a different kind, an anticipatory sort of thing, the knowledge that Murray's successor won't be as easy to manipulate, not as negligent of the chain of authority. Punishment might be reinstated. He might be taken away from the STRIKE boys, from leadership. From choice. This may be the end of his season of happiness.

If he's grieving, it's not for Murray. Not really.

“Come along,” the Nurse says. “Help me put him in the box.”

Once they've loaded the body into its cardboard coffin and shuttled it into the fire, the Nurse takes the Soldier's hand, leading him away from the furnaces like he's a child. She takes him to a small bathroom and makes him sit down on the closed toilet seat. There's barely enough room for him to bend his knees between her and the sink. Next to the faucet is a small powder compact and a tube of lip chap with the label torn off.

“You look dreadful,” she says. “You will frighten the boys if you go upstairs now, and at such a difficult time. Stay still.”

He stays still. He watches as she runs water for a long time, waiting for heat. She wets a handkerchief and comes over to him, but she leaves the water running.

“Did you know,” the Nurse says, beginning to scrub at his hairline, “That this is the only room in the facility without listening devices? The crematory is, of course, heavily bugged. One never knows what one might hear during a send-off for the dead. But this floor is my kingdom, and it is rare that anyone needs to go further than the office. No one comes down this hall without my express permission. It is an interesting fact.”

The Soldier looks up, but says nothing. The Nurse wrings out the handkerchief and re-wets it. She motions for him to close his eyes, and when he does, she places the warm cloth over them. He allows himself a small sigh; it feels good.

“What is your professional opinion of Agent Crozier?” she asks.

He thinks. Crozier's been avoiding the team lately, hasn't been in the locker room as frequently, hasn't been as social. It could be the beginning signs of a psychotic break—the way the STRIKE boys said he was talking tentatively confirms it. STRIKE agents have had them before; it's a tough job. A drug addiction is also possible, although the logs say Crozier hasn't been leaving the facility any more than usual. Hiding to shoot up, maybe, hiding to conceal symptoms. He says as much to the Nurse.

“A sound analysis,” she says. She wipes the bridge of his nose once, twice, then scrubs harder. “I would like to add a piece of information. Four days ago, I visited the labs to ask Dr. Prescott’s opinion on a subject of medical interest. While I was there, I saw Agent Crozier leaving a room. He had a piece of cotton taped to the inside of his arm.”

“Blood test?” the Soldier hazards.

“The door he walked through was not connected to a room containing phlebotomy supplies,” the Nurse says. She waits for him to think, and then she says, “I believe Agent Crozier is having financial difficulties. I have heard rumors of an ill mother undergoing expensive medical treatments.”

The Soldier sits up straight, dislodging her hand from his face. He stares at her. She turns to wring out the handkerchief.

Hollowly: “You think we're experimenting on our own people.”

“Tell me,” she says, returning, tilting up his face to access the underside of his jaw, “Do you think we are employed by a virtuous organization?”

“That's treason,” he whispers at the ceiling.

“The question is flawed, firstly,” she continues, as though he said nothing. “Moral relativism allows any thinking person to justify their actions as constituting an honest effort towards the greater good. I think, therefore I am; we think, therefore we are right. But secondly, it makes an incorrect assumption. We are not employed. We are owned. We do not belong to ourselves. Your body is a gun; my body is a scalpel. We are little tools in the hand of a savage god.”

He swallows. He could haul her out of the room now, upstairs, into Murray's office—but Murray's dead, and there's no one who can take his report, even if he wanted to give it.

He doesn't want to, and that's half the problem.

“What's your point?” he says.

“War is a continuation of politics by other means,” she says. “I only want you to question your assumptions. Murray gave you the gift of autonomous thought. If you wish to honor his memory, I suggest that you use it.”

She drops the handkerchief in the garbage and walks calmly out of the room.

Now that her body isn't blocking it, the Soldier finds himself confronted with the mirror, everything in it pale and yellowed under the ugly light. He catches himself in a moment of surprise, his own face unexpected, before he brings his eyebrows down. He's looked better; he's looked worse. That old scar under his right ear like a slash of chalk. He feels cobbled together from scraps of other men, with his too-old mouth and his too-young eyes, the muscles of his neck, the soft shag of hair Murray hasn't made him cut in months. He doesn't look much like the drawing anymore, he thinks. Then again, he can't remember what the drawing looked like.

“Murray, you son of a bitch,” the Soldier hisses, but Murray's not listening; Murray's dead. Murray's burning.

 

☙

 

It takes four days for a new cell leader to come down the pipes.

In the meantime, the cell attempts self-governance. The Nurse keeps an eye on the labs and everything Downstairs. The Soldier recruits Paglia and DuQuette to help him look after the STRIKE teams and everything on ground level. Active resentment is still rampant in Alpha and among the guards, but the boys respect their own, so he tries to make it look like he isn't running anything more complicated than the nutrient slurry machine.

He tries not to think.

Harrison tells him about the funeral. It was well-attended, she says. Lutheran. Some family, members of his previous cell, old Navy buddies. No wife, no mistress; nobody slept in his bed but his dog. Harrison's still in her black dress and lace gloves, cemetery mud clinging to her high-heeled boots, no color on her face. He doesn't think she ever got around to liking Murray, but he thinks she's sad that he's gone, and maybe a little worried. Not in the same way the Soldier is—he's on the verge of panic even with the Nurse's chemical assistance—but Harrison has reason to be concerned. The Nurse is ubiquitous; Harrison is replaceable. The successor might not be as forward-thinking as Townsend and Murray about the presence of a perky girl-engineer, wearing blue eyeshadow and getting too close to the Asset. Her days in the cell might be numbered.

It is, apparently, tradition for a member of STRIKE to meet the new cell leader at the gates and bring them to their predecessor's office, so the Soldier is dragged in with the rest of them for appearance's sake. He feels unbalanced, being included. Paglia arranges the draw, which looks random, but the Soldier fully expects it to be weighted towards one of the more qualified men, someone older, not likely to be intimidated but equally unlikely to throw his ego around.

To his amazement, the Soldier draws the short straw.

“Go get 'im, Winter!” Andrev hoots, and Paglia claps the Soldier on the arm on his way out, grinning. The Soldier makes a rude gesture over his shoulder.

He's not sure what to think about the man who steps out of the helicopter.

The Soldier's not saying HQ has a type, but HQ kind of has a type. Older, solid, ex-military men with a casual bearing. The only thing this one has in common with Townsend—and presumably with Murray, before he went gray—is the pale hair. Wheat-blonde, the kind that'll go white instead of silver with age, if he doesn't start dyeing it. Blue eyes. The Soldier doesn't read military off of him. The Soldier's having trouble reading anything at all, except for a vague sense of familiarity. He's seen this man before, somewhere, some time. The new guy might not be so new after all, might have visited the cell in the past, but the Soldier's skeptical—the new guy's too young for that, too young to have come before the Soldier started remembering faces. Either way, it's a smooth face, a trustworthy sort of face; the Soldier feels almost safe, looking at it.

The Soldier never saluted Townsend or Murray, so he doesn't salute now. When they meet at the gates, the Soldier turns on his heel without a word, walking one stride in front on the way back to the compound. He feels eyes flick over him and away; he's been dismissed as just another STRIKE agent, anonymous and interchangeable. The Soldier stops at the door to Murray's office and gestures inside. The new guy walks in without so much as a glance. The Soldier plants himself under the doorjamb sideways, so he can keep an eye on the corridor and the interior at once.

“Christ, look at this,” the new guy says, and the Soldier's expectations drop a little. Fantastic: another one who enjoys talking to himself. “It's like a shrine in here. I guess they just expect me to take what I want and chuck the rest.” When the Soldier looks, the new guy is holding up one of Murray's weird display of salt and pepper shakers, peering at it. “What kind of General collects kitchenware? He must've been an odd one.”

“He was an incompetent ass,” the Soldier says, and watches the new guy's head snap up. The Soldier adds, a beat too late: “Sir.”

The new guy looks at the Soldier with his hands braced on the desk, looking all the world like a senatorial campaign ad. His startled expression melts into calm almost instantly. Thoughtful. Calculating. The Soldier meets that diamond-drill gaze and thinks, shit, shit, shit, I've miscalculated, this one didn't ride a desk on the way up to the top, this one's come back from something and hasn't quite remembered how to be _tame_.

“That so,” says the new guy. “On what grounds?”

The Soldier says, “He's dead, isn't he?” The new guy barks laughter. Aha, the Soldier thinks: not afraid to laugh at a subordinate's disrespectful joke. This one might allow himself to be bent. “Plus,” the Soldier adds, feeling braver, “He killed Colonel Townsend in '89.”

“Way I heard it, that was the Asset.”

“Funny.” The Soldier grins, testing. “That's the way I heard it, too.”

The new guy offers a long, considering look over the desk. The Soldier stays very still, loose shoulders, letting himself be examined. He knows he's passed muster when the new guy comes around the desk and offers his hand.

“Your work has been a gift to humanity,” the new guy says, as the Soldier shakes his hand. “Alexander Pierce. I suppose I have the honor of giving you your new orders.”

No rank. Interesting. “Sir,” the Soldier says. Pierce's eyebrows raise. The Soldier realizes he's expecting reciprocation. “I don't have a name.”

“Surely they call you something.”

“Murray called me Lazarus,” the Soldier says. Wryly: “He thought he was funny. STRIKE Beta call me Winter, also because Murray thought he was funny. The documentation usually calls me the Asset.” He shrugs.

A hint of a frown. Pierce puts his hands in his pockets. “And what do you prefer?”

“Whatever makes my handlers happy.”

“How do you think of yourself?”

The Soldier clasps his hands behind his back. “I'm a soldier.”

Pierce murmurs something that might be: _interesting_. It's the right tone, anyway. Out loud, he says, “And you didn't like General Murray.”

“Whether or not I liked him is irrelevant,” the Soldier says. “He regularly put the STRIKE teams in danger because he followed bad intelligence. He put the whole _base_ in danger by altering my cryostasis schedule without a long-term crisis management plan. I have no idea if he was allocating funds properly—I just know he wasn't too careful for a guy who murdered his predecessor to get the job. He was nice, sure, but niceness doesn't win wars.”

“Military leadership without optimism is impossible,” Pierce says, like a challenge.

“Military leadership without skill is a goddamn tragedy,” the Soldier counters.

Pierce grins. There's a few too many teeth for it to be, strictly speaking, a friendly expression. While the Soldier is determining whether or not he should feel threatened, Pierce says, “Whatever makes your handlers happy, huh? Well, give me the nickel tour.”

The Soldier takes him through. Thankfully, Pierce seems to have no inclination to visit Downstairs or the crematory; the Soldier's never really been sure about his solo elevator clearance, and now would be an inopportune time to test it out. He finishes in the prep room, which is currently crowded with STRIKE Alpha, STRIKE Beta, four techs, Harrison, and the Nurse, who looks magnificently bored. Her poker face is carved from marble. The Soldier has no idea what she thinks of Pierce, but Pierce, on the other hand, finally animates. He makes the Soldier show him the medical rigs, the cryostasis chamber, the chair— “Where the magic happens,” says Pierce, and the Soldier feels that _magic_ is too strong a word, but he says, “Yes.”

Pierce looks at the chair with a faint smile, and the Soldier can't tell what he's thinking at all.

When Pierce finally turns, it's to walk straight over to Alpha.

“Agent Toland,” he says, extending his hand to the team leader; “Agent Olusoga, Agent Cavanagh. So good to finally meet you. Your reports have been very helpful.”

Terror crawls like acid up the Soldier's throat.

Moles—in _Alpha_. Moles reporting to Pierce, reporting on Murray; _fuck_ , no wonder half the team hated him. If HQ was waiting for Murray to pull something stupid, they wouldn't have been waiting for long. The Soldier flicks his eyes to Harrison, who has stopped breathing, and then to the Nurse, who is already looking at him. She gives the minutest shake of her head.

“This cell,” Pierce says to the room, “Was once the humblest backwater garbage dump, scoring lower than any other base in management, tech advancement, and mission success, despite housing Dr. Zola's impressive menagerie. Some of you have been here long enough to see that sad state of affairs change under Colonel Townsend; some of you have been privileged enough to come later, during its meteoric rise to one of the most efficient HYDRA cells in the United States. All of you, veterans and newcomers—you should be proud of yourselves. You really should.”

Pierce begins to applaud, and Alpha joins him. After an awkward moment, Beta joins in, whooping; Harrison and the techs follow. The Soldier and the Nurse keep their hands clasped tight behind their backs.

“I have just one question,” Pierce says, when the clapping settles. “Just one,” says Pierce, and snaps his fingers.

Alpha opens fire on Beta.

It's over in seconds. Eight headshots and two body shots, Paglia and Andrev the only ones left groaning on the floor, reaching for weapons that aren't there, shouldn't need to be; it's the prep room, and STRIKE protocol means not coming in armed, not where the Soldier could steal a gun and wreak havoc on the cell. Three of the techs and Harrison all scream, the techs like teakettles, Harrison the outraged yowl of a hunting cat. The Nurse's lip curls. She takes a single step back to avoid the lake of blood spreading towards her shoes. Agent Kidd, gun steady in his hands, looks like he's having a religious experience.

The Soldier has no weapons, but he doesn't need any. He _is_ a weapon. He lunges at Pierce, ready to take him out at the hips, break his spine—

“Sputnik,” Pierce says, and the Soldier's knees crash to the floor.

He feels his hands come to the back of his neck like they're on strings, his face gone slack. The occupants of the room look as though they're moving through gelatin, haloed with nauseating color in his peripheral vision. Slow sickly heartbeats in his throat. Some tiny wakeful part of him, the tired old man in the back of his head, is incandescent with rage. It screams at him to get up. Level the room. Make these motherfuckers pay, all of them, but especially that one, the one with the smile, the one who came back from hell just to torment him, his own personal demon in a three-piece suit.

Pierce grabs the Soldier's hair, wrenches his head back. He doesn't know what's on his face—stupidity? fear? rage?—but Pierce is calm. Calm, with the wildness in his eyes. His pupils just a little too small. Two dogs, staring each other down. Someone's about to get their throat torn out.

“It's a shame, what Murray did,” Pierce says. “You were perfect, you were unquestionably without peer. Why did he have to ruin you, huh?”

Murray gave the Soldier autonomy: a blessing, he'd thought, but now it's a curse. He has to be present for this. He has to remember his one season of happiness, now, in the face of what is about to happen. He has to decide if he's going to fight when the time comes.

“A damn shame,” Pierce says. “Things never seem to work quite right after you break them.”

In the last act of defiance his frozen body will allow, the Soldier closes his eyes.

He hears: _I want the neurology teams working round the clock, this isn't the dark ages—unacceptably low turnover, you can't get attached—run by the books or don't run at all—_ but the Soldier isn't really listening. He goes deep, following the darkness down into himself, a strategic retreat. He's only peripherally aware of the tank against his back, the clang of the door as it shuts, muted pneumatic hissing. He doesn't notice the cold.

This is going to hurt, and he needs to be ready.

 

☙

 

They drug him. They drug him with different things. One of the drugs makes him aggressive; makes everything shimmer and twist, disorientating. He kills a technician. By the time they take him down—stun batons against his stomach, his spine, his face; he can smell his skin burning—the man's head is a wet smear across the tile. The man broke his neck when the Soldier threw him to the ground. He didn't suffer.

That's important, somehow.

They don't punish him for it. They punish him later, when he hasn't done anything wrong, when he's sitting quietly, when his hair is wet and the drugs make him soft and pliable.

He understands: this is how you break a person.

Too bad for them. He's not a person.

 

☙

 

The Nurse disappears. A manhunt comes to nothing. She's vanished into thin air, and all her secrets with her. Pierce is furious. Zola's menagerie split in two: never worth as much separate, are they, Alex—without the original packaging?

The Soldier smiles until Pierce makes him stop.

 

☙

 

The Soldier kills a man in Massachusetts.

He doesn't write it down. They've taken the paper in his arm.

 

☙

 

This is how you break a person, but he won't break, he knows their game, he won't break. You make them hate you and then you take them apart and make them love you instead. He won't. He can stop bullets, he can stop tanks, he can stop them from getting into his head. What Zola did wasn't breaking—it was barely even torture; torture implies intent, torture implies a purpose to the pain, a desire to get something out through the hurting—but it taught him how to endure. It will hurt. It doesn't matter. They can't kill him. He's too strong; he's too valuable. When he comes spiraling down from the chemicals, there will always be some small part of him that knows: this is how you break a person.

He's a person—maybe. He might have been, once.

But he won't break.

 

☙

 

It doesn't occur to him that he might not have a choice in the matter.

 

☙

 

The Soldier kills a man and a woman in New York.

(The truth is, he can't remember how to open the compartment.)

 

☙

 

Pierce brings him things. Nice things, things he would have appreciated before. Biodegradable bullets with untraceable toxins. A beautiful knife, perfectly weighted. A plastic gun that can be smuggled anywhere, that comes apart into innocuous shapes. The Soldier breaks all of them without emotion. He wants to claw out Pierce's eyes, tear into him like a rabid dog, but he shows nothing. Never fear, because it's fear they want. Never anger, even when his blood boils up with chemicals, even when he kills. He looks at the world blankly. Through a distant lens. If he wears anything on his face at all, it's pity.

They don't punish him for breaking the gifts. They don't punish him for killing their men.

They're still trying to break him, and really, he feels sorry for them.

 

☙

 

The Soldier kills a woman in—in—

 

☙

 

Someone improves the halo on a beautiful spring day. They have all the doors open to let in the morning breeze, air sweet with dew and wildflowers, skies clear for miles. The color reminds him of something. Strapped into the chair, half-dazed and bleeding from his ears, the Soldier can smell fresh-cut grass.

He spends five whole minutes, mesmerized, unable to remember the name of the man standing in front of him, unable to remember anything but his finger on a trigger and the mission they've given him. He's already halfway out of the chair when the memories hit him, and he goes for Pierce like a bull. It takes ten STRIKE boys and their stun batons to bring him to the ground. They beat him as if it means something.

He laughs.

 

☙

 

He wakes up sometimes in places he doesn't recognize, drugged to the gills. He doesn't know how he's arrived, except that someone must have put him there. If he can't remember, he couldn't have been awake, unless—no. They must have drugged him. They must have moved him. The first time, he looks for civilization, for clues as to who or what he's supposed to kill. He assumes they're presenting him with a puzzle. He assumes they think he's slow. He passes out before he can find it, the first time. He wakes up in transit. They aren't taking him back to the base in—the base—they're not taking him home to the island. They take him to a city in the middle of the night. They put him in the vault of a bank.

They do it again. He looks harder.

They do it again. He looks harder.

After that, he sits down and waits, even when it takes days.

Let them arrange games like children. He won't play.

 

☙

 

The soldier kills a man.

 

☙

 

The drugs get better. The halo gets better.

They won't break him.

 

☙

 

The soldier kills—

 

☙

 

They won't break him.

 

☙

 

The soldier—

 

☙

 

Australia, hot, sand in his plates, something bites him and he doesn't die, sweats out the heat and the poison and tries to remember, he'll keep this if it's the last fucking thing rattling around inside his burnt-out brain, they won't break him—

 

☙

 

“You're a real stubborn son of a bitch,” someone says.

Blind, tongue swollen, nothing but the pain and the voice.

“You were an asset to this country once. Why can't you do it again? Why's it so hard for you to see reason?”

Up, up, get up, kill it—

“Ssh, ssh, you're not going anywhere.”

Hand in the hair. It hurts, but only because everything hurts. It hurts less than the rest.

“I want to help you. Why won't you let me help you?”

 _Kill_ —

A sigh.

“That's all right. It's fine. It's not linear, this sort of thing. We'll try again tomorrow.”

Black.

 

☙

 

A man dies.

 

☙

 

“Sir? Why's he...”

“Aww, lordy—yeah, it does that sometimes. Usually it's all right to leave it, it'll just watch itself heal up, but sometimes it'll get stuck and keep going. Dig a hole in its face or something. You gotta watch it. If it doesn't stop, just wrap its hands up with gauze.”

“Will he—will it be upset? I've heard some, uh, stories.”

“Not like this.” A hand. The scalp. “Hey? You're just a great big pussycat when you get out of the chair, huh? See, it likes it. You can touch it all you want. It's Pierce and the STRIKE boys who have to worry—it used to go after them all the time. It was pretty funny, actually.”

“Huh. I wonder why.”

“Who knows, kiddo. Some mysteries man was never meant to solve.”

 

☙

 

Spinning. Not-spinning. The machine. The floor.

“Get it up, for god's sake, it'll lay there all day if you don't.”

Click. Spinning. “What have you done to my _hauptwerk_?” Shriek! Click-click.

“Calm down, Doc. I thought you'd like to see him. A little present.”

“What have you done to him?” Click-click. Whirring. “Where is Margrit? Where is— _nnn—_ Margrit? Where is— _nnn—_ ”

“He's glitching.”

A sigh.

“Someone wipe the logs, give him a soft reset.”

Noise. The machine trying to laugh: _Nnn_ -ha. _Nnn_ -ha. _Nnn_ -ha. _Nnn_ -ha.

 

☙

 

Cold.

 

☙

 

“I hate to say it, but this was a lot easier when he could think for himself.”

“You ain't kidding.”

“Oh, the hell with this. Hey! You! Anybody in there?”

A tap on the temple, like knocking.

 _Nobody here but us chickens_ , it thinks.

For no tactical reason it can understand, its shoulders begin to shake.

“Fuck's sake.”

“Christ. Preload him with haloperidol.” Rustling. A liquid noise. “It's gonna be a long night.”

 

☙

 

The asset completes a mission.

 

☙

 

Blood.

“Out, damned spot!”

Water.

“Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, a soldier and afeard?”

“There's something wrong with you, Ed.”

“Nothing wrong with enjoying your job.”

The hose.

 

☙

 

Cold.

 

☙

 

The asset sees a newspaper. The newspaper says: February 03, 2000. Something about the date provokes a response. The body laughs; the body stops. It thinks: this is fear.

The asset returns. It asks: what year is it?

Fear. Theirs.

The body laughs.

The body stops.

Pain.

 

☙

 

The asset completes a mission.

 

☙

 

“You don't eat,” the man says, “Unless you're told.”

Bottle. Nose clamped shut. Head back. Glass ice-slippery-cold tapping against teeth. Mouth open. When there is a hand the mouth opens. Smelling—

Fire. Knife-sharp glass-noise, shattering close. Burning. Shock.

Swallow.

No, no, _no—_

“You don't eat,” the man says.

Fire in the throat. Inhale: no. Exhale: no. Someone is trying to scream.

Ice, too early.

 

☙

 

Eyes closed. Red light coming through. Or: white light through blood. Blood in the skin, over the eyes. Wavelengths.

“Why does he always keep his eyes shut until the last minute?”

“Who knows. Old conditioning?”

There was a reason.

It thinks—it thinks—

“NGT coming out.”

It stops thinking.

 

☙

 

The asset completes a mission.

 

☙

 

Cold.

 

☙

 

Cold.

 

☙

 

Cold.

 

☙

 

The asset shoots a man.

But the man—

 

☙

 

“I knew him.”

 

☙

 

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Malfunction.

 

☙

 

—the man doesn't die.

 

☙

 

Something about fighting Rogers makes the asset want to cry. To curl up in a ball and sob like a child with a skinned knee. It bites its cheek to pulp. It remembers things it does not want to remember. Choice. Before. A garden. It wants to stop. It wants to die.

When Rogers talks, the asset screams.

 _I knew him_ , the asset thinks. It looks at Rogers on the riverbank, bleeding. The knowing that made it drag Rogers to shore. The knowing that prevents it from breaking Rogers's neck. A static charge. Its body electric. _I knew him_ , it thinks. It doesn't want to know why. They hurt it for the knowing.

So it runs.


	3. to wound the autumnal city

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He drinks water from a hose. He runs when he hears voices. He sleeps fitfully, in pieces, hidden from the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **By request: warning for intravenous drug use (no explicit descriptions of needles) and off-screen assault against a minor.** Take care of yourselves, y'all.

###### 2015

Steve had been hoping the vault base wasn't big enough for a crematory. He's wrong.

There's a distressing correlation between bases big enough for laboratory facilities, and bases that have cremation furnaces, usually connected to an incomprehensible piping system that—he isn't sure—filters or distributes or nullifies the inevitable smoke. After all, no one in the vicinity of a base, urban or rural, has reported vast clouds billowing from suspicious chimneys.

One HYDRA crematory bit back; Steve had found two dead agents in front of one of them, mysteriously burned, and a slick of something on the floor that smelled worse than trenches in August. After talking to the clean-up crew, Steve worked it out. The agents trying to dispose of the body hadn't known—and neither had Steve, up till then—that a crematory basin ideally wants to be pitted and warped to contain body fluids while they vaporize. The agents had pushed a large man's body in on a wide metal gurney instead of the standard cardboard box. Paper burns; metal doesn't. When the agents had opened the door to check the progress, a wave of molten fat had come pouring out. Steve was less disturbed when he read the base notes and figured out that the deceased in question had been a victim from the labs, not a HYDRA agent. _Good for you_ , Steve had thought, startling himself with his own viciousness. _Good for you, pal. You got the bastards_.

The crematory in the bank vault is still roaring when Steve finds it. He peers over the controls until he finds the off switch. He uses a broom handle to open the first door, just in case, but there's no unpleasant surprises waiting for him. No body in the second one, either.

Just a pile of white-hot slag that might, if you used your imagination, have once been an arm.

It's a long shot, but he pokes at the molten metal cautiously, just in case it has any clues to offer up about Bucky's condition or his reasons for wanting the arm destroyed. All Steve succeeds in doing is setting his broom handle on fire. He tosses it aside, letting it burn itself out on the concrete floor, and watches the pile of metal slowly change color as it cools. _Oh, Bucky_ , Steve thinks, and closes his eyes.

After he calls Sharon, he suffers through an hour of increasingly fruitless questioning from the agents in the clean-up crew. Yes, I believe the Winter Soldier was here. Yes, I assume that's his blood. No, I have no idea why he cut the metal arm off; you'd be better served asking an expert. What kind of expert? I don't know. Yes, the remains of the arm are in the furnace. No, I don't know why he destroyed it. Yes, I believe he worked alone. No, I don't know where he might have gone.

At any rate, they set his mind slightly more at ease when they find something he missed: a medical cupboard with a smeared thumbprint of blood on the handle. An inventory reveals it's missing clotting powder, alcohol, suture thread, and—judging by the blood on the box—at least one latex glove. Bucky wasn't just cognizant enough to melt the metal arm in the crematory; he was cognizant enough to sew himself up. It's a relief; a complicated one, but a relief all the same.

It's equally relieving to escape into the afternoon breeze, free of the stale air and the blood and the strangely lingering ghost of old-rich-man cologne, even if it's only to trade it for the smell of gasoline and too many food trucks. It's good to be home, good to be sleeping in his own bed again after months of increasingly grungy hotel rooms, busting his ass all over the continental States, dragging base after base into the light. It's good to be home, Steve thinks, even as he wonders at the timing—could Bucky really have appeared in DC only two weeks after Steve threw in the roadtrip towel, just by coincidence? Could they really just be ships passing in the night? Could it have happened more than once—in California, Texas, Oregon?

Steve finds himself scanning faces for the one he knows isn't going to be there.

 

* * *

 

###### 2014

The asset comes back to himself in a dark field. He has lost one boot, somehow. The grass is long and wet; remnants of clouds in the sky, scudding into the distance.

He takes stock: his jacket is also gone. He knows this because he's shivering. The ankle still in a boot sends a wash of pain up his leg when he leans on it. Not broken, or broken hours ago, on its way to healed. Three ribs are certainly broken. The viscera in his abdomen feels gummy, unsettled, and there's a dull, sick ache throughout his pelvis. The girder did more damage than anticipated. The dislocated arm is set—did he set it? Did Rogers?—no, Rogers was unconscious, half-dead on a riverbank—but it's compromised, uncomfortable. He needs water, calories, rest.

Assessment: poor.

The asset is also uncertain about where he is. Has he walked for hours—or days? Is he one mile outside of DC, or fifty? Anxious, he looks up.

His mind goes blank.

He has forgotten how to navigate by the sky.

The vasty blackness, the crystalline smear of stars: they dig claws into the base of his throat, where adrenaline sputters, where panic spools out to tremor his limbs, and he drops to his knees in the wet grass. Even gasping, there isn't enough air in his lungs to slow his galloping pulse. He can't remember ever being this afraid. He remembers, but he can't remember that. This is what it means to start fresh, he thinks wildly, they've taken everything out of him but his violence, he's only a machine _—_

He feels something click in the arm. The panic-spiral slams into a wall, ice spreading out from his left side. He stares at the metal plates with something that begins as horror before it softly diffuses out of his grasp.

He is calm.

In the blankness, he tries to think. It's difficult to dredge up whole thoughts under the plush blanket of sedation. It feels like the moment before a shot, the exhale, the place where everything slows. Like that, but without clarity. He sits back on his aching ankle just to feel, unsuccessfully. The pain dampens up through his body. A drop of blood in a cup of water, dissolving. It's cold.

He knows this: they will come for him. He's valuable. An asset— _the_ asset. Even if they don't want to keep him, they'll want to execute him for failing his mission, for failing mission after mission, the biggest mission of all. For knowing what he knows. And even if they don't want to punish him, they'll want to keep him from falling into the hands of the enemy. He's too valuable to leave to chance. He's old and broken, but he's still the best. He thinks: he's sure. Is he sure? He was more certain before he fell into the river.

He knows this, though: they'll come for him, and they'll hurt him, and they'll make him forget. They'll put him back under the ice. So he has to choose. He has to make sure they can't.

“Murray, you son of a bitch,” the asset says, without entirely knowing why.

He gets to his feet. Once he's limped another mile, he finds what he's looking for. The bay is placid under the stars, a black mouth in the night, devoid of shorebirds. Not other birds: an owl makes a disappointed noise in one of the trees. The asset doesn't bother to remove his guns before he walks into the water. He won't need them again. Let some fisher's son find them; sell them for scrap.

When the water is deep enough, the asset dives. He swims down and searches blind, looking for—he doesn't know. But he'll know it when his fingers touch it. There: an anchor. Jagged flakes of metal slicing his palm to ribbons. He can taste salt and rust and blood in his open mouth. He locks the metal arm around it. He breathes in.

 

☙

 

The asset wakes.

He lays defeated on the beach. Wet sand against his face, in his mouth. He wheezes, coughs, and then he vomits. He coughs some more. He stops coughing. He becomes aware that he's making a terrible keening noise, the moan of an animal in desperate pain. An animal that doesn't care if it gets caught. Some old part of him snarls: _dignity, remember your fucking dignity, get ahold of yourself—_

 _How?_ he asks.

The answer, it turns out, is standing on two feet.

 

☙

 

The soldier makes his way up (down?) the coast. At dawn, he hides himself in a tight copse of trees and shrub-like plants so tangled they seem like one organism. After sunset, he moves again. He avoids people. His bare foot bleeds, stops, bleeds again. A dog tries to attack him; breaks a tooth on his metal arm. When he feels thirsty, he drinks salt water because it's there, because he's curious whether it'll kill him. It doesn't. It doesn't seem like there's anything that can.

A store on the outskirts of a town has racks of clothes inside. It doesn't appear to have an alarm system. One of the windows has been replaced by a board. Vague smears of graffiti. He breaks in and changes his clothes to something less conspicuous; finds a pair of boots. Two warm jackets. A pair of gloves. He throws his old gear in a dumpster.

He eats half a sandwich he finds in another garbage can. It feels like he's swallowing glass. Ten minutes later, he throws it up, along with a lot of blood. Vomiting feels like being set on fire. He thinks maybe it was the meat. He can't remember eating meat; eating anything. His meals have come through tubes and needles for as many years as he can remember. And then: he remembers when they didn't. He remembers solid food. Before—before—

Before Pierce.

He vomits again, almost on principle.

A few hours later, he finds a discarded burger, still warm. He eats the bottom half of the white bun and nothing else, slowly, in very small bites. It feels moist in his mouth; goes down dry and scraping. Half an hour passes but it doesn't come up again. He drinks water from a hose. He runs when he hears voices. He sleeps fitfully, in pieces, hidden from the sun.

 

☙

 

He walks for six days.

More than half the food he scrounges won't stay down, and what does stay down still hurts to swallow. He finds things that are usually safe if he chews them into paste: white rice, apples without the peel, plain chicken. Sometimes even those things get rejected. He walks in fits and starts while the hunger eats him alive. His body devours the little fat he has, and the muscle when it's through with that, a forest fire in his own body, until he can fit his fingers between the ladder of his ribs. All of his joints ache. He has to go further and further into civilization to find any food at all. At sunrise, he crawls into the first dark hole he finds.

He wakes up to three children staring at him.

Before the girl can finish saying, “Yo, he's alive,” the soldier has his back to the wall and his knife in his hand. He tries to stand and can't. The children—teenagers, he realizes, gangly and wide-eyed and filthy—look blankly at him. None of them move. The soldier wonders if they have any survival instinct at all. His heart pounds nauseatingly fast, fluttering like it's about to burst. He can't breathe.

“Dude, chill,” one of the boys says. “We're not gonna hurt you.”

“You a vet, mister?” says the girl.

“You high?” The other two kids turn to glare at the second boy. “What? He's twigging _out_ , just look at him.”

The soldier says nothing. He adjusts his grip on the knife.

“Mister, are you okay?”

“Hey, you wanna, like, breathe?”

“Fuckin'—give him a little space, numbnuts,” the first boy says, and hauls his friends back a few feet.

The soldier manages to take a little sip of air, and then another. He takes one hand off the knife and grabs his chest. His heart won't stop pounding. It's going too fast. It's going to—

His arm: _click_.

Numbness spreads through him. His knife drops to the concrete. He gasps, gasps; breathes. A bucket of ice over his head, trickling down his spine. He feels very far away, but the pain under his breastbone is sharp as glass. He's floating in cold water. His head falls back to smack the concrete wall. He shakes.

“Hey!” someone shouts, and the girl says, “Oh _shit_.” The kids run.

Footsteps, approaching. A woman kneels in front of the soldier. She's tall, maybe taller than him, arms and legs like tree trunks. Solid. Dark hair clipped almost to her scalp. Red marks on her arms. Black tattoos on her neck.

“Oh, sweetheart, you ain't lookin' so hot,” the woman says. She turns and shouts: “Polya! We got agonies!”

Another burly woman appears, crouching. Blonde. Cigarette between her lips. She touches the soldier's face, pries open his eyelids, looks in his mouth. “What're you taking?” she asks.

“I don't know,” he says. “They used to give me—” and he lists as many as he can remember.

The women frown at each other.

“ _They_?” says the blonde woman.

“I don't recognize any of those,” says the first woman. “Wait, ain't Depo, like, birth control?”

“Well, whatever,” the blonde woman says, tossing a bruised leather bag to the other woman, who catches it and flips it in her hands. “Sevredol's hospital smack. Do him a favor, he's clucking either way. Hey, you military?” Before he can answer: “He might be just the guy we're looking for.”

A wash of terror, diffused. He tries to calm himself immediately to avoid triggering the arm again. He looks at the women. They don't look like HYDRA. HYDRA was very clean (the officer says _clean_ , and he shudders), but the women have dirt on their elbows and under their nails. The blonde woman has ash on her chin. The first woman isn't wearing a bra; he can see through her thin shirt. The hem of it fraying loose.

“You need a fix?” she asks, as the blonde woman walks away.

She's offering to repair him, but she's not trying to take him back. He likes her, he decides: her solidity, her sharp-jawed face, the way she slurs her words together. He's so clearly broken that a total stranger can see it. He feels, vaguely, some species of shame. He was better than this, once. Wasn't he? The woman looks competent, strong. If she says she can fix him, she can probably fix him.

“Yes,” he says. The woman crab-scuffles over and sits down beside him. Up close, she smells like sweat and coffee.

“First taste's free,” she says, opening the bag and pulling out a burnt spoon, “But you gotta do something for me later. When you've got yourself right. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says.

“What's your name?” she asks.

He stares.

“I'm Tank,” she offers, and waits.

He says, hesitantly, “I was a soldier.”

“Obviously, Slim Jim, but your CO had to call you something.”

The soldier shrugs, shaking his head.

Tank peers at him, and then her face crumples up. “Shit, you don't remember, do you? You get hit in the head out there? Aw, fuck—you're fucked up, baby boy. They fucked you _up_.”

The weary old man in the back of his head says: _ain't that the truth_.

“Where am I?” he asks.

“The Wolf Den,” she says. He blinks. “Volk Dom? La Cueva? The Badlands?” After a moment: “ _Philly_ , baby, you're in North Philadelphia.”

The soldier blows out a long breath.

“How'd you even get here?”

“I walked,” he says.

“From _where_?”

“DC. It was.” He stops. “It was on fire.”

“Yikes,” Tank says. She rolls up his right sleeve. “Hey, good veins. Make a fist. You see what went down there?”

“I,” he says, “I was...”

What he was about to say becomes very unimportant.

Tank makes a soft noise. He looks at her. She's smiling, so he smiles too. “Hey, look at that!” she says. “Look at you. That nice, sweetheart? That's the good stuff.”

Warmth, driving the ice out of his bones, flushing his face. The hunger gnawing at his spine sloughs out of him like a weight. He can almost feel it leaving his pores. All of his pain is leaving him, floating to the surface, seeping out of his joints and into the air, the bad things escaping to burn in the sunlight. It drifts upwards—or is he falling? He's heavy. So heavy. He moves in and out of consciousness, and every time he opens his eyes, Tank is there. Sometimes she's watching him. Sometimes she's standing nearby. She doesn't leave him. He feels—safe.

Surfacing for real is a disappointment.

The warm place dissolves into the real world, which smells like human urine and despair, which has a concrete floor that's putting his ass to sleep. The pain, it turns out, never left; his joints feel like crumpled-up balls of barbed wire. He feels like he'll shatter if he moves. He moans, low, barely audible. He feels it as a vibration deep in his aching throat. Opiate, he realizes. She's injected him with an opiate. Morphine. Heroin. Fentanyl. He's felt this before—they gave it to him before. When, and under whose order, he can't remember. The man before Murray, he thinks; Murray wasn't—wasn't—

Murray? He almost has the face.

“Where'd you serve, kiddo?” says Tank, startling him. “You miss it?”

The soldier looks at her, his head swaying oddly, like the muscles in his neck have stopped working. She follows his movements, her head bobbing. He thinks she's mocking him, before he realizes she's only making sure she has his attention. “All over,” the soldier says. “I was—” and his mind goes blank.

“Spec ops?” Tank suggests.

“Assassin,” he says, and flinches.

Tank's grin is sudden and wide and unhinged, showing the gums above her canines. It makes her mouth seem too big for her close-cropped skull—too mobile, too sharp.

“That,” says Tank, “Is exactly what I hoped you'd say.”

 

☙

 

Tank bullies the soldier to the place she calls La Cueva. She drags him bodily to a bathroom on the third floor. It's decrepit but organized: everything lined up just so. Electric razor; toothbrush and paste; nail clippers. A broken mirror, spray-painted. When he stares at the counter for too long, she starts stripping him down efficiently. She puts his weapons next to the sink. He lets her do it; he only gets in the way of the techs when he tries to help. He expects her to grab at him, maybe pull him by the dick, but her hands don't linger, and neither do her eyes. Not until his shirt comes off, anyway.

“Whoa,” Tank exclaims. “The hell happened? Somebody beat you? And—is that StarkTech? That looks like StarkTech. Holy shit.”

“I think it's Russian,” the soldier says doubtfully. He remembers Zola, suddenly, like a knife to the kidney, and shudders all the way to his toes. “Or—or Swiss,” he manages, unsure if he'll throw up.

“Well, whatever, so long as it's waterproof.” Tank turns on the shower, which gives a horrible shriek before it emits water. The soldier nearly leaps right out of his skin. He grabs the edge of the counter behind him, his fingers digging gouges in the particulate. “Hey, sweetheart, deep breaths. It ain't gonna eat you. Get your ass in there. _Jesus_ you're white—you ever see the sun? You're like something off the bottom of the fuckin' sea floor.”

“No,” he says, stepping into the tub. Tank pulls the mildewed curtain mostly shut. The water swirling around his feet immediately turns brown. He feels disoriented. The small space echoes. “I was,” he says, “Underground.”

“Uh huh,” Tank says. “You know how to wash yourself, Gollum?”

“Yes.” He must have been good, if they're letting him shower by himself. If they're letting him have warm water, he must have been—no, _no_ , he's free now, he's free, fuck, he doesn't have to— “How did the woman know I was a soldier?” he asks, to stop himself from slipping. God, he's so tired.

“Polina? Just looking,” Tank says. There's a creak. By the shadow, she's sitting on the toilet tank, her feet on the lid. “Same as me. Just, y'know, body language. It's a fuckin' useful skill to have, right? Saves me a whole lotta grief, knowing whether some punk-ass kid is really gonna use that knife he's waving around. _You_ know.”

There's no shampoo, so he rubs soap into his scalp. “Yes,” he says, and makes a frustrated noise. He can't get his fingers through the tangles and mats without tearing his hair out.

“Oh, brother, I know that sound.” Tank whips the curtain open. “We shoulda just shaved that mess off.”

“No,” he says, “I want to keep it,” and flinches so hard he takes a chunk out of the tile with his metal elbow.

“Oh, fuck right off,” Tank says, but she doesn't sound angry. “Sit that pasty ass down, then. Fucking—I don't even know if I have a comb. Stay put.”

The soldier sits down. The shower spray is faint but comforting on his ribs, his right shoulder. It feels like wading through tar, trying to think, so he taps the side of the tub and counts so he won't struggle against it. He rubs his cheek hard. Tank comes back in ninety-seven seconds with a wide-toothed comb, a white bottle, and a woman chewing bright pink gum. It matches her chipped toenail polish. Blood under his fingers as Tank says, “Hey, quit that shit.”

“Wow,” says the woman, not sounding impressed at all. “I thought you were kidding. You legit have a naked murder-hobo in your bathtub.”

“Right?” says Tank, gesturing. She double-takes. “Yo, _quit_ it.” She pulls the soldier's hand away from his face. The other woman leans her hip against the doorjamb and crosses her arms. She stares at the soldier, snapping her gum, for a long time. He watches her mouth and barely breathes.

A snap. Her tongue comes out to snag pink threads off her upper lip. “Gabriel?”

“Yup,” Tank says.

“Good,” the woman says, and walks away.

The soldier is still staring at the doorway when Tank dumps something cold out of the bottle onto his head. He hisses involuntarily and then flinches a few times in a row, fear over fear over fear. He opens his eyes when nothing happens.

“It's conditioner, chill. I bet you never used this shit in your whole life.” Tank's fingers are suddenly digging into his scalp. He makes himself go very still. A moment later, she starts stroking through his hair, tugging gently. It hardly hurts. He drops his forehead to the rim of the tub in surprise. He remembers, just a sliver of a moment, another woman touching his head. The smell of blood. A—fire? He chases it, but it's gone. A small noise comes out of him before he can bite down on it.

“Yeah,” Tank says grimly. “I bet.”

She swaps her fingers for the comb. He listens to the soft _plink plink plink_ of plastic teeth working through hair. Firm short tugs. It stings a little when she pulls, just enough to distract him from the ache in his knees, through his pelvis, the stiff curve of his spine. They must have been giving him something, he realizes: something that isn't in the arm. Something to keep him coming back, something to stop the pain. And then: the girder. He feels all smashed up inside. He wants more heroin. He wants to sleep.

“We gotta look decent, where we're going,” Tank says after a while. _Plink. Plink_. “Gonna show you something to get you started, and they ain't gonna let us in if we look like junkies. Don't know if there's any help for you, though, sweetheart.”

“I clean up nice,” the soldier mumbles, and Tank laughs like he's made a great joke.

The Nurse, he realizes. The other woman who touched his hair. The Nurse, and the crematory, and Murray's body. It comes to him slow, like the sun rising, crawling up his spine from some deep place. If they burned out his memories, he wonders, where do they come back from? Are they hiding in his bones, in the spaces between his veins? Maybe that was why they needed to wipe him so often. The memories hid. Deer, running from a forest fire. He has no way of knowing how many of them have survived.

Once she has a pile of shed hair the size of two fists, Tank makes him rinse off the oily substance on his head and dry himself with a towel. She steps back and purses her lips.

“Arright, arright,” she says. “I'm a big girl, I can admit when I'm wrong. Face like that, you must've got in all _sorts_ of trouble.”

The soldier cocks his head. Tank flings her hands in the air.

“ _Amy_!” she shouts. The soldier just manages to keep from twitching. “Hustle your tits!”

The gum-snapping young woman appears, looking even less impressed than before.

“Didn't Jerk Number Five leave a bunch of his clothes here last time you fucked him?” Tank asks. Amy gives a languid shrug. “See if you can't find something less dumpster-chic for Gomez Addams here.”

“Are you kidding? I burned that stuff ages ago,” Amy says. She perks up slightly. “I've got some of Lefty's crap. Hey, dude, you going to let us dress you like a doll?”

The soldier nods. He doesn't think 'let' comes into it.

They put him in a pair of too-long jeans, a clean tee-shirt, and a red sweater with sleeves so long they flop over his hands. Tank is doing up his belt and Amy is pulling his hair back when Tank mutters, “This is somebody's fetish.”

“Not his, clearly,” Amy says. She smacks the soldier's hip. “I bet he's gay. You queer?”

“I don't know what that means,” he says. A thrill of fear up his spine.

“Queer,” Tank says. “A homosexual, baby boy. Like me.” He blinks at her. “The fuck, seriously? Girls who like girls. Guys who like guys. Folks who don't like nobody at all.”

The soldier remembers kissing a boy in a hotel room. Hands on his knees, his waist. His hand in the boy's hair; how good it felt before he stopped it. The kid—no, Kidd. Agent Kidd. Somebody saying: _You think he's..._

The soldier looks at the women and doesn't want to kiss them.

“I think so,” he says. “Yes. I'm a homosexual.”

“What the fuck, Tank, I think he's got water on the brain.” Amy snaps an elastic behind his head, snaps her gum in counterpoint. “How do you not _know_ this shit?”

“I was,” the soldier says, “I was on ice,” and starts to laugh. It's a long time before he stops.

 

☙

 

The girl in the hospital bed was probably beautiful, once.

She barely looks human. He can't tell her age: she could be eight or she could be fifteen. There's a tube down her throat and another down her nose. Everything outside her green gown is hugely swollen, red and black, and the skin looks paper-thin, like it's about to split. The soldier remembers something gangrenous. An arm beneath a stone. Both of the girl's arms are in casts past the elbow. So is one of her legs. Splints on four of her fingers. A necklace of half-healed cigarette burns across her collarbones.

“Those go down to her waist,” Tank says, when she catches him staring. Her voice shakes: anger. “I won't tell you what he did below that.”

Amy said—

“Gabriel,” the soldier says.

“Fuck,” says Tank. “Yeah. Lemme tell you about Gabriel. He's a mean piece of shit, but he's a coward, 'cause he's got a problem with ladies thinking for themselves. You know? A man's a coward when he thinks a woman's doing a better job than he is. Feels threatened. Like his dick's gonna fall off if a girl doesn't lay down at his feet.”

The soldier doesn't understand, not really, but he understands cowards: cowards do stupid things to prove they aren't. He nods to show he's paying attention.

“Okay, so, Gabriel, his problem is ladies. He hates that there's a lady in charge of the Wolf Den. See, it was Dima's place first—that's Polya's brother—but Dima got his stupid ass killed over some hooker from _Nawlins_ , of all places, and Polya stepped up like the boss she is. Which was a blessing, sweetheart, because Dima was kind of a fucking tragedy, if I'm honest. Anyway, Polya takes over Dima's industry, but she's smart, and she knows Gabriel's gonna get all up in her shit about this, like, yesterday. So she comes to me and she says, how about a deal. My people look out for your people if your people look out for my people. Neighborhood watch, right?”

“That's _two_ women in charge,” the soldier says. He's beginning to fit it together. It feels like a mission, the same humming in his bones. He likes Tank's briefing better than Pierce's, he thinks. He manages not to gag, this time, thinking about Pierce.

Tank points at him with her forefinger out and her thumb up. Like a gun. “Give the man a prize. So Archangel Gabriel the Messenger rolls on down, and he says to Polya, he says, oh, princess, lemme take that dirty business off your pretty hands. Well, Polya won't play, so Gabriel, he starts with the big talk. We growl back, because nobody messes with Polya, and that's when that motherfucking _caco_ —” Tank's teeth bared like she's going for a throat, cracked skin over her knuckles on the bed rail, “—decides it's fair game to turn one of our baby girls into ground beef, because he ain't got the _cojones_ to deal with a couple'a grown-ass women.”

The soldier puts his hand on Tank's shoulder. He twitches halfway through, unsure. She's breathing hard. He thinks maybe she'll hit him if he touches her, but she doesn't. She slumps a little and sighs. She reaches up to pat his hand. It feels strange. He feels dizzy, and puts his other hand on the rail.

“He was trying to scare us,” Tank says, after a minute. “Well, I tell you what, we ain't scared, but if one of my girls—if _any_ girl—goes after Lord High Gabriel, his lieutenants are gonna bring the wrath of god down on every chola and homegirl this side of the Badlands, and there ain't no way I'm letting more kids get hurt on account of some gigantic man-baby who breaks little girls for fun. You follow? 'Cause this is where you come in, sweetheart. You're gonna make my _year_.”

The soldier looks at the girl and all the machines keeping her alive.

He isn't sure why Tank is showing him this. His orders are clear. She's his handler, and—he smacks his temple with the heel of his hand, hard. No, she's _not_ his handler, he doesn't have handlers; he's self-actualizing. Pierce said that once: _why was it ever allowed to self-actualize?_ He hadn't understood what it meant at the time, but now he does. It means choosing his own missions. It means doing things because he wants to.

Mostly, he wants more heroin. He just hurts so fucking _bad_.

“Yes,” the soldier says. “Estimated completion: twenty-four hours.”

“Good enough for me,” Tank says. “C'mon then.”

The soldier moves to follow her, and then he stops. He looks at the girl in the bed. “What's her name?”

Tank comes back. She reaches out and touches the girl's hair, the only part of her that doesn't look like it hurts. The girl's chest moves up and down, out of sync with the soft beep of the heart monitor. Tank's face is blank. Yellowy, under the fluorescents. He can see the planes of her skull under its thin fuzz of hair.

“Didn't I tell you, baby boy?” she says. “The girls call her Mousie, on account of she hardly talks. Her real name's Sofia. She'd kill me if she knew I told a soul, but she might up and die anyway. So. It's Sofia. My Sofie. She's my little sister.”

 

☙

 

The soldier comes back seventeen hours later.

He surprises Tank in the kitchen; she yells and throws an ancient cast-iron frying pan at him. He dodges it with a twist that makes pain shoot nauseatingly through his abdomen, like something's torn inside. He doesn't drop his bag.

“You scared the bejeezus out of me!” Tank says. She punches him in the bicep. Luckily for the integrity of her hand, it's the right one. “No more ninja shit. Fuck, nobody should be able to walk that quiet in combat boots.”

“Sorry,” he says. Tank makes a face at him. “Target eliminated.”

She lights up like fireworks. “You did it? You—c'mon, c'mon, sit down. What's all this shit?”

He puts the duffel bag on the table and opens it. Tank's eyes and mouth go very wide.

“Is that—”

“Thirty thousand dollars,” he says.

Tank points at him with an interrogatory expression, which he takes as a request for a debrief.

“I determined who Gabriel's rivals were,” he says. “I stole two kilograms of heroin and some stamped bags from their headquarters. I located Gabriel and followed him, and watched him until I saw him injecting heroin. Once he fell asleep, I broke in. I injected very small amounts of heroin at the same site until he stopped breathing. I left the stamped bags with the rest of his drugs to take the heat off of you, and I turned the stereo on loudly so his neighbors would eventually call the police. I,” he says, moving his metal fingers, “Didn't leave any prints. I sold the heroin on the other side of the city.”

Tank's mouth is still wide open. The soldier frowns. “Was that not right?”

“Baby boy,” Tank says unsteadily, “I could _kiss_ you.” And then she does. She leans forward and grabs his face in her hands, and smacks her lips against his forehead. He freezes, stunned. “Whaddaya want?” Tank says. “Food? A hit? A guy? My firstborn?”

He realizes she means the needle. “A hit,” he says, and after a moment: “Food, but. I can't really—eat.”

“Blegh?” she asks, gesturing to her mouth, “Or blegh?” at her belly.

“Blegh,” he echoes, indicating all of him.

“Ugh,” Tank agrees. “Okay. You're gonna go lay down, and I'm gonna give you one more hit—that's it, yeah? I ain't your dealer—and then I'm gonna go grill Cruz, her daddy's got IBS or something. We'll figure it out. Here, couch,” and she swats his ass when he doesn't move fast enough. Before he can lay down, she grabs at him and says, “Hold up, jeans ain't fun to sleep in,” and he stays very still while she undresses him.

She ties off his arm, this time, and he thinks she gives him a bigger dose, because once the plunger goes down, it feels like his whole body is expanding to fill the room, floating broad and warm, full of stars. He's the sky and everything under, and nothing hurts. Blue. It reminds him of something. Before he drifts all the way down into the dark, he opens his eyes to see Tank standing backlit at the table, looking down at the money with her hands on her hips, shaking her head.

 

☙

 

The soldier hears a voice and scrambles upright. A woman, tall and muscled and too close. Blankets tangle around his feet and he almost falls. Kicks them off. Flings himself over the back of the sofa and slaps at his waist for weapons he doesn't have. They've been taken from him. He's naked. He snarls like an animal when the woman makes a noise. He doesn't understand: his aching back, his dry mouth. He casts around for something he can use but there's nothing to hand. Everything feasible is on the other side of the woman. Too far.

“Hey, sweetheart, hey,” the woman says, and when the soldier looks at her she drops to her knees. Palms up high, smudged with ink. Her expression is open, unafraid. A twist to the mouth he can't identify. A vein flutters on her shaved temple.

“I'm not gonna hurt you,” the woman says. “Ain't got nothing. See? It's okay.”

A horrible swath of seconds tick by. Audibly: a clock somewhere. Soft clicks. The soldier adjusts his center of gravity and watches her.

“You know who I am?” she asks. The soldier shifts. Sweat on his palm. He doesn't answer and pain grows somewhere in him. The woman says, “Gave you a shower yesterday. Remember? You remember me, sweetheart?”

No, he wants to say, no, I don't know you, except his throat is closing and he can't say _no_ , I don't, I've never seen you before in my—

“Tank,” he gasps, and falls to the floor, all in a heap with his legs half crossed. He presses his spine against the wall. “Tank. You're Tank.” He pants. Gasping at the ceiling like a fish. Tank crawls around the sofa on all fours and sits next to him. She puts her hand on his shoulder and squeezes. He can identify the thing her mouth is doing now: concern. He wants to hide his face in his hands and forces himself not to.

“Yeah,” Tank says. “You got it. You okay?”

“No,” he says, and scrubs a hand back through his hair, hard, tugging until it hurts at the borders of his face, like he's yanking on a mask. He rubs hard on the side of his nose. “No.”

“Breathe,” Tank says. She takes his hand away from his face. “And quit that.”

“It's,” the soldier says, and then loses the thought. He elbows the wall with his flesh arm, but the sick tingling that shoots up his nerves doesn't bring it back. He swallows whatever it was and chooses something else. “It's. I'll do better.”

Tank shrugs. “That was on me, yo, I'll make more noise next time. Anything I can do?”

Before he can talk himself out of it: “Yes. There's something I—” The soldier lets himself look away from her. “Please.” A feeling like fists on his spine, like electricity, when he gets it out. He clenches his jaw.

“¿Sí?”

The soldier rolls the left side of his body towards Tank, twisting into the ache. He taps the red star on his shoulder. “I want this gone.”

Tank frowns. She scoots closer and swats at him until he makes room for her in the corner. She scratches at the star with two blunt fingernails, and then with the blade of her pocketknife, humming something tuneless and low.

“I got an idea,” she says. “Sit on the couch or something, I'm cold just lookin' at you.”

He gets up when she leaves and sits on the edge of a cushion. Tugs a blanket onto his lap, folds his hands on top, stays very still. Fourteen minutes later, Tank comes back with a small machine in a box. She makes him come over and sit on the floor. He tries to stumble over to her; his legs collapse. He crawls the rest of the way on one hip, sideways, like a crab. The floor is cold and he wishes he'd dragged a blanket over with him.

Tank plugs the machine into a wall socket and says, “Cruz's cousin Pedro's a jeweller, let me borrow this. You seen one of these? It's a Dremel. Grinds and polishes and shit.” It makes a whine like a drill when she turns it on, and he flinches hard. Tank stops just before she touches him with the spinning end. “You got feeling in that thing?”

“No,” he lies.

The process doesn't quite register as pain, but it isn't comfortable. Strange sensations rattle between his shoulder and his spine, raising goosebumps up his neck and down his side. He grits his teeth and tries to breathe. Plates shift unhappily in his forearm, sometimes all the way to his hand, waves of motion along his fingers. Uncontrollable. Distant frustration spikes up under the warm fog; he doesn't understand how his body works and he probably should.

“So Amy comes to me last night,” Tank says loudly, over the sound of the Dremel, “You know, after you fell asleep, and she goes, hey girl, you ever watch the news? And then she shows me a video on her phone.”

The soldier flicks his eyes to her without moving his head, but Tank isn't looking at him.

“And—dude in the video? Was doing a pretty good job of _totally wasting_ Captain America and his superfriends. Funny thing is, I can't figure there's too many mangy white guys with metal arms shooting up the East Coast. Which, okay.” Tank leans into his arm, shooting up sparks. Quieter: “I gotta ask.”

Resignation, he thinks, is the thing he's feeling.

“No,” the soldier says, “You really don't.”

“No, I really do,” Tank says, “Cause I got a _responsibility—_ ”

“You hired a killer you found on the street—”

“And I gotta be sure you ain't a fuckin' psychopath if I'm gonna let you hang around the fuckin' kids!”

The soldier blinks at her. She turns off the grinder and switches the head to something softer, her lips pressed thin, her brows pulled down. The ink on her neck is drawn taut.

Slowly, he says, “You were going to let me stay?”

“Have you _seen_ you?” Tank exclaims. “You look like you just walked outta Auschwitz. You look like you been through the _wars_ , baby boy. I got a huge fucking neon weak spot for that shit, in case you hadn't fucking noticed, of _course_ you're staying.”

“If I'm not a psychopath.”

“If you're not a psychopath.”

The soldier doesn't say anything. Tank buffs away at his shoulder for a while longer, and then she says, “This is where you go, _no, Tank, I'm not a psychopath, I'm a good boy_.”

“I don't know,” he says. A clammy desperation rises through the clouds. Oh, please, don't let this one throw him away. He doesn't want to wander the roads again. “I don't know if I am, but I'll only kill the people you tell me to, I promise. I can follow orders. I can be good.”

“That ain't...hugely comforting,” Tank says. “Okay. Do you _wanna_ kill people?”

“No,” the soldier says.

“So why did you?”

“That's what I'm for.” Even as he says it, it doesn't feel right. He wasn't made for that at all. He wasn't made to kill things. He was made to not be killed.

Tank's expression is pained. She wipes her mouth on her shoulder. “Jesus, sweetheart.”

“I'll do whatever you want,” he says, feeling wretched and small. “Please. Just give me something to do. I'll be good.”

Tank offers an even stare. She squints at him, moving the Dremel in slow circles without looking down. He forces himself not to break eye contact, and lets her think. It makes him tremble, winding up tighter, until he realizes part of it is that he's freezing.

Finally, slowly, Tank says, “You got brain problems and you gotta keep busy if you're not gonna freak out.”

Relief feels like warm blankets.

“Yes,” the soldier says. “Yes.”

The machine stops buzzing. “There,” Tank says, and rubs her thumb over his shoulder. He tilts his arm and his head to look at where the star used to be. There's a patch that's a little too shiny, not quite the same tone as the rest of the plates, but all traces of red are gone. “Ain't perfect, but I'm no detailer. You want racing stripes, you're on your own. What's this about, hey? They don't own you no more? Army of one?”

“Your army,” he says, pleading.

Tank grins. “Mine, huh? Guess I should put a brand on your ass.”

The soldier almost says _okay_ , and then he realizes she's making a joke. He tries to grin back, but it feels strange to make the shape with his mouth. It feels crooked.

“There you go,” Tank says. “C'mon, _manito_. Let's see if those shiny fingers can't crack a few dozen eggs.” She pauses. “Maybe some pants first.”

 

☙

 

At first the Soldier thinks La Cueva is the headquarters of a gang, but as things come back to him, he realizes: it's not. The hierarchy is too messy. There aren't any guns. Tank doesn't deal drugs, and neither does anyone who lives there. It isn't allowed. Even Polina, the woman who runs the Wolf Den, is banned from the premises; Tank goes to her, not the other way around. _Un refugio_ , the girls say, when he asks them. _Este es el asilo_. The place where no one hurts you. Most of the squatters are women, aged anywhere from sixteen to sixty, but sometimes others pass through. Boys with bloody noses, frightened men. Tank decides who gets to stay the night and who gets to sleep rough by the Den. Who is allowed to shoot up and who's had enough.

The soldier stays the night, and then he stays several nights. More than a week, he learns later: plastered to the sofa and drifting through places he doesn't understand. A murkier world. The cars are different in his head. Things knit back together under his skin, under Tank's curious hand. Under many curious hands. The younger girls run away, at first, when he opens his watering eyes, but when all he does is sleep and sniffle and shoot up, they lose their fear. They fit themselves in the bend of his knees, they comb his hair, they touch his arm. He shifts the plates for them carefully. They're thin and delicate. He's so scared he'll hurt them.

When he can move without making things bleed inside, he learns the routine of La Cueva. Tank loves routine, so the Soldier does too. No matter how much heroin he has at night, he can't seem to sleep past 0530, when the drugs wear off and the hurt comes on like he's taken a beating, so he lays on the couch until 0600 and then he wakes Tank. She takes up a collection and cooks breakfast for the pack of the day. _La soldaderas_ , Tank calls them, even the vagrants who only come for food. She encourages them and sometimes shouts at them; she doesn't have much patience for girls who get in fights or skip school. ( _¿Has perdido el respeto a tu madre?_ he hears her yell at one girl. _¿Has perdido el respeto a tu cerebro?_ You get your goddamn education!) Tank's friends—girlfriends? the women who come and go are always kissing each other like Europeans, and the Soldier can't tell—sometimes gather after to talk. There's always one of them posted downstairs, guarding the door.

Some of the older girls are wary of him, once he's no longer furniture. Tank tells them he's queer, which helps a little, as does the fact that he hasn't been exiled to the Den, but it takes announcing that his dick doesn't work to really settle everyone. “Our very own court eunuch,” Queenie says, and the older women all cackle. Despite his presence, La Cueva slowly returns to what Tank says is normal. The girls work around the body on the sofa. His sleep is interrupted by loud music, or people moving furniture before dawn, or somebody giggling in the doorway and the slap of bare feet running when he twists to see, and by girls in the room itself: multiplication tables, apprentice work for Pedro, wrestling on the rugs.

Sometimes he forgets to wear clothes, which makes Tank laugh. Sometimes he forgets who she is, which she thinks is less funny.

Tank has a job at a beauty supply shop in an especially rough area. She won't let the Soldier come with her when she walks to work, “No matter how much of a scary motherfucker you are, seriously, no boys allowed—” so she gives him a cardboard sign that says HOMELESS VET and sends him out to panhandle. He gives her some of his money for food and the sofa and uses the rest for Polina's heroin. When the money isn't enough, he pickpockets. He always does what Tank says. He has to remind himself six times a day that he's free, she's not his handler, she doesn't own him, but his body doesn't listen. It snaps to rigid attention whenever she comes in the room, whenever she gives him something to do; it's exhausting. He wishes he could do the little things she asks without losing himself. It happens with the older women, too. Cruz and Seven and sometimes Queenie, the unassuming little Englishwoman who pretends she isn't lethal, but the Soldier can tell. It's some whiff of authority they all exude, some aura of command. He doesn't like to examine it too closely.

He makes an ally of sorts on his panhandling rounds. Desmond is a veteran. Of what, Desmond refuses to say; he has some kind of brain damage, the connections in his head all haywire. The Soldier can relate, except that Desmond is smarter. When he's stable, he teaches the Soldier how to calculate large numbers and what the Periodic Table of Elements is, and why it's important, even to a bum. He's quiet and gentle, except when he's confused. Desmond's a big man, so when he gets shouty around 1700, the Soldier is the only one who can keep him down, even though it makes his bones hurt. Most evenings find him trailing after Desmond for a few hours before he goes back to La Cueva, where Tank's usually hovering between a charred pot of rice and a few girls twitching off some high or another. After a few weeks of that, he steals an industrial rice cooker, and everybody's lives improve.

Heroin is the main thing improving his own life. When he doesn't want the memories hijacking his brain, he can banish them. When he doesn't want to think about HYDRA, he can float away. When he hurts too much to eat, it kills the hunger. When he can't sleep, the clouds are waiting to take him into the dark. He goes from two hits a day to three, and then four. Tank cuts him back down after he graduates to five, especially when he starts spending most of the day asleep and the rest of it upset and confused, and gets himself stabbed with a screwdriver when some desperate kid tries to take what's left in his kit. The Soldier doesn't complain, can't complain, even though he gets sick from cutting back, even though the heroin's the only thing that gives him any relief at all from the pain. He tries damn near everything else; he's banned from anything psychoactive after he almost breaks Pedro's neck, convinced for a helpless pink-washed span of minutes that the little man in the jeweller's glasses is a technician. The pain's in his joints, mostly, and along the front of his shins, through his hips. His back always feels like someone's beating on it.

“Maybe it's a magnesium deficit,” Amy says dubiously, and Queenie says, “That's calcium, dear.”

“Actually, you need magnesium to absorb calcium efficiently,” says Seven, because she just knows these things.

“Maybe it's arthritis,” Tank suggests, and palpates the Soldier's hand. “Hey, Manito, this hurt?”

“Yes,” he says.

“I don't believe arthritis can happen to young men like you,” Queenie says, and the Soldier doesn't say he's older than he looks. It can't be a disease, can it? He can't get sick. It must be damage, he decides; years and years of damage and ice and electricity finally catching up with him. He wasn't made for this. He should have healed by now, if he was going to; his throat and stomach are still damaged from something. Maybe beyond repair. He must have been like this all along, and they drugged him so he never noticed, pumped him full of painkillers and sent him out with cracks in his bones. He never asked what was in some of those IVs, when he could. He didn't need to know. He wishes he knew now, and then he's glad he doesn't, and then he stops thinking.

 

☙

 

Tank can't understand why he continues to sleep on the couch.

There's a perfectly good mattress down the hall, she keeps telling him; sofas aren't meant for cranky old men with joint pain. And besides, six nights out of seven, there's a bunch of girls on the floor, making out or bitching at their homework or generally causing a ruckus in the rough hours of the morning, and the way he twitches awake if someone sneezes downstairs, he can't _possibly_ sleep through any of it. Why on earth would he choose a couch that's too short for his legs over a bedroom with a door that locks, sort of? She never outright orders him, though, so he practices little acts of disobedience, and stays.

The Soldier wonders if Tank notices the other things and just doesn't mention them. The way he always spends his mornings in the kitchen, smelling food he mostly can't eat and getting stepped on by whatever level of circus is in attendance—the way he'll hang around anyone, when he's panhandling, even the tweakers and the gangbangers and the skinheads, so long as they don't stab him for lingering in their territory. Either way, Tank can't possibly know that at night, when he can't sleep, he listens for breathing. Anything to prove he's not alone.

Alone means missions. Alone means targets. Alone means a death is coming.

The last thing he wants is a door.

 

☙

 

A full screaming fistfight goes down between two girls in the alley. When one of them pulls a knife, Tank and the Soldier are the only ones around brave or stupid enough to pry them apart. They shriek at each other even as they're dragged to opposite walls: Tank pinning a girl with her whole body, the Soldier taking the other girl's knife and holding her back with one arm. His girl has a fantastically bloody nose, streaming over her bared teeth and down her throat, staining the front of her shirt red. His own blood is up, singing.

It feels familiar. Familiar, but he doesn't remember anything to go along with the feeling, nothing even remotely similar; he's never broken up a fight in his life—and he realizes, like a brick to the head, that it must have been before. Before the arm, before the fall. Before he grew up. They didn't grow him in a lab; they couldn't have, not then. He had a _childhood_ , on the other side of the yawning black chasm he can't cross, a time when he must have held someone back against a brick wall just like this, when he told them to fucking well back down or he was going to sit on them until they did. He was just like these skinny wildcat teenagers, once. Blood on his bright young teeth, his knuckles. Cocksure and righteous.

It terrifies him.

 

☙

 

Sometimes it's a mess.

When Sofia comes home, down twenty pounds, according to Tank, with a cast on her left arm and one permanently blind eye, the Soldier is stitching up one of the twitchy girls on the counter. The kids woke him from a dead sleep, so he's anxious and not really awake and still flying high, but he's the only option because Tank and Queenie and Cruz are gone, Seven is busy with somebody's baby, and none of the kid's equally twitchy friends would touch the needle. (Funny, how they could stick each other's veins but got queasy when it came to sewing each other up.) The kid ran into some girl at some place whose ex-boyfriend she'd slept with, maybe, he's not really clear on the details, and she'd taken a beer bottle to the face for her troubles. It's not deep, but head wounds are leaky and she's a bleeder, so he meets Sofia half strung-out, panicky, red to the elbows, with a pack of sutures between his teeth.

“That's Manito,” Tank says—unnecessarily, the Soldier feels, since he's the only unchaperoned man in La Cueva.

Sofia walks right up to him and wraps her right arm around his waist gingerly, like she's scared of breaking him. It's not that she's scared of _him_ ; her face is mashed right into his ribs. She's fresh out of the hospital, the cleanest thing he's ever seen in the squat, and he hovers fretfully with his bloody hands, looking at Tank, hoping he's conveying some species of “help” with his expression. Tank just grins. He rolls his eyes and spits the package onto the counter.

“Thank you,” Sofia whispers.

“You're welcome,” the Soldier says awkwardly. Remembering the manners Desmond's taught him: “I'm glad you're feeling better.”

Sofia's grip becomes slightly less delicate before she speeds off down the hall, cradling her cast. The Soldier stares after her, and then he glares at Tank.

“Next time, maybe wait until I don't look like a fucking serial killer,” he says.

“So: never,” Tank says.

“Hey!”

The girl on the counter slurs, “Yo, dog, bleedin' here?” and then falls asleep.

Other times, it's peaceful.

There's an evening where the quiet girls are on the roof, the rowdier girls are at a concert outside the Badlands, and everyone else is asleep. It's just Tank, Cruz, Queenie, and the Soldier sitting on the floor, the women sharing a bottle of whiskey. Tank is touching up one of her tattoos with India ink and a needle, Cruz is doing a crossword in a Spanish newspaper, and Queenie is sewing the underwire back into somebody's neon orange bra. It's raining outside, and if he lays down and closes his eyes, he can hear the pattering under their mingled voices. Tank's low drawl, Cruz's pack-a-day rasp, Queenie's sugar-sweet alto.

“So Polya tells me she's setting up a chapel in the Den,” Tank says, squinting at her knuckles. “I say, so how're you gonna convince some padre to slum his way in there? And she says, hell, Tank, just get me one of those internet priest licenses, I'll marry 'em all myself.”

“You should ask Seven,” Queenie says. “It's about time, and you _know_ we'd all give you our blessing. Christen the chapel for Polya and all that.”

“Wouldn't that be a fuckin' sight,” Tank sighs. “Can you imagine me in a dress?”

“One bride wears a suit, other bride wears a marijuana bikini,” says Cruz, and Tank roars laughter.

Queenie inspects her work and tosses the bra over the back of the couch for its owner to find. She shuffles around until she can lay down and pillow her head on the Soldier's stomach. Queenie confused him at first, with her easy affection and her casual touches, and he wondered what she wanted from him until he learned that she did it with everyone. She's like him: she likes to be around people. Queenie doesn't talk about her past, not ever, but Tank told him she was in a British gang, and the government took her kids before she ran. He guesses that's why she bothers to look after the girls, despite their very loud claims of independence. He doesn't know what Tank's excuse is.

“I couldn't find Desmond today,” the Soldier says, after no one speaks for a while. “I heard someone say he assaulted a cop.”

“Poor Des,” says Queenie. “He's such a smart man. I ran into him all the time, back when he used to sleep rough behind the Den. He used to be an engineer.”

“Is it dementia or something? Schizophrenia?” the Soldier asks. He's learning a lot about the ways a brain can go wrong, panhandling with the other vets, talking cops out of arrests, lurking at the shelter when it offers food he thinks he can handle. He isn't the only one who forgets himself, and he's learning from them the best ways to keep the bad things at bay. They use drugs, mostly, but they also keep busy. He's very grateful for Tank, who gives him things to do; it's getting easier. Unlike the other men, he's getting better all the time.

He feels Queenie shake her head. “Oh, no, not at all. I thought you knew. He was shot in the head—not in Korea, but when he came back to the States. A man tried to kill him. He has a steel plate.”

“Just like Manito,” Tank says.

He flips her off with a metal finger.

“How'd you lose that one, anyway?” Cruz asks.

“I fell,” the Soldier says. “Don't know where. I fell a long way and—I guess I dislodged some rocks. A boulder pinned my arm and I was alone, so I had to cut it off.”

“Fuck,” Tank mutters.

“Manito, dear, that's terrible,” Queenie says. “Just like that poor—what was his name, Tank? Aaron something? The boy who had to amputate his own arm in the desert. They made a very distressing movie about it.”

“Don't ask me,” Tank says, and Cruz shrugs.

“There was a deer,” the Soldier says slowly. Tank and Cruz look at him; even Queenie turns her head on his stomach. It comes to him in flashes, stuttering. He's almost sure that it never happened—it's too bright, too vivid—and then he's certain it did. “A deer,” he says, “And a river, I went to the river and,” he raps his heel against the floor, “Tried to break the ice. Didn't work.”

“Did you just remember that now?” Cruz asks.

“Sort of,” he says to the ceiling. “I think—I think I remembered it before. And then I lost it.”

“Things will come back,” Queenie says, and twists her arm to pat his knee. “The brain is a resilient thing.”

The Soldier props himself up on his elbows and smiles at her. “Maybe I don't want to remember all the bad things that happened to me. Maybe I'd rather make new memories.”

“Look at you, Mr. Smooth!” Tank crows, and Cruz wolf-whistles. “Careful, Queenie, he's gonna sweep you off your feet!”

“Just what I always wanted,” Queenie says, fluttering her eyelashes. She laughs suddenly. “Actually, I think he'll have to, because I don't think I can stand up. Be a good boy and tuck your poor soused grandmother into bed, won't you, Manito?”

“Yes ma'am,” the Soldier says.

“Ma'am!” Tank cries, and falls over.

 

☙

 

The Soldier is learning new things every day.

His favorite things are the useful ones. White rice hurts less to swallow if you soak it in chicken broth. You shouldn't kill spiders because they keep the pests down. A cheap cut of meat will go a long, long way in a chili. You can help someone who's having a bad trip by talking quietly to them. Ginger settles the stomach but burns the throat. Janitors sometimes leave spare garbage bags under trash cans. The lighter your skin, the less often you're stopped by the cops. It's Sofie who teaches him how to pet a cat without hurting it. Tank, who teaches him how to shave himself when his facial hair suddenly starts to grow in. Desmond, released on probation and moving stiffly, shows him the guts of a building, how it's constructed, when the corner of a condemned hotel collapses overnight. Seven lets him watch her braid the cholas' hair the way they like, sleek gravity-defying constructions that make them look like fearsome statues in their dark makeup and their gear.

He's learning that he isn't violent, not really. Tank says he's like Consuela, the pit bull Pedro rescued from a fighting ring. At first she was aggressive, and sometimes she'd forget that Pedro was nice to her, and she'd try to bite him for no reason. But now she doesn't flinch when someone moves too fast, and they can let her roam free in the shop, and the littlest girls can hold her paws and play with her scarred-up gums. _I'm not a dog_ , he tells Tank, and sits on her when she tries to coo and scratch his belly, and Cruz has a small breakdown.

He's learning that he _wants_ to be a person.

He thought it would be humiliating, but it's different, now that he's free. It's good to be a person. Assets are given orders; shoved in cryo chambers; beaten; made to kill. Assets damage things and are damaged. Which isn't to say people don't damage each other—he's been stabbed twice, once with the screwdriver and once when he pulled a man off a girl in the alley, and he's broken up a few violent fights; seen plenty more. Drugs make some people crazy and sick, and it's dangerous for even him to be alone on the streets at night. There have been twelve local overdoses since Tank took him in, five of them fatal. The world he lives in now is no safer than the one he left, but being a person within it is miles better than not being a person at all. He gets quiet evenings with the older women. Hugs from the twitchy girls, sometimes. Food that hurts less to swallow. Heroin. Blankets. He learns that he likes to stay warm, and that he has a decent singing voice, and that he prefers not to wear shoes.

He also learns that Tank is an evil scheming devil-woman.

She drags the Soldier with her to the Wolf Den, which should have made him suspicious in the first place; he's not out of heroin, and she never involves him in her talks with Polina. Upstairs, she pushes him into a room that contains one young man on a grotty mattress, with a book on his knees and a pencil in his hand. Something zings through the Soldier that feels like remembering, almost, without the images to go along with it, unbalancing him just long enough for Tank to escape. When the Soldier turns around to grab her and tell her he doesn't need a babysitter, she's already shutting the door, but she pauses and jams her head back in the room like she's changing her mind.

“Luke, this is Manito—Manito, Luke,” Tank says. She points at Luke but looks at the Soldier. “Manito. Luke loves kissing but doesn't like to fuck.” She points at the Soldier and looks at Luke. “Luke. Manito's a great big queerio but he's got a broken dick.” She gestures oddly between them. “ _Figure something out_.”

And then she slams the door.

When the Soldier finally stops glaring at the wood and looks at Luke, Luke is looking back with a wry smile.

“Wow,” Luke says. “That was...subtle.”

“No,” the Soldier says, “I think you mean the other thing.”

They stare at each other for a minute.

“So,” the Soldier says.

“C'mere,” says Luke, and pats the least grotty part of the mattress. “I don't bite, I promise. You're one of the Adelitas, right? I've seen you around their place sometimes.”

“Not in an official capacity,” the Soldier says, because that's what Tank calls it. He's amused to be classed as one of the girls.

“What do you do?”

“Court eunuch,” the Soldier says, which makes Luke laugh. It's a nice laugh, so he comes over and sits down. “Alarm clock. Referee. Medic. Panhandler. That's Shoshanna,” he says, pointing at the page, where a lot more of Shoshanna than he ever needed to see is draped over some pillows.

“Yeah, she sat for me this morning. Classical lady, god, I could draw her forever.” Luke twiddles his pencil between his fingers. “But forget her, I'd love to draw _you_. Where'd you get those cheekbones, white boy?”

The Soldier figures that's a rhetorical question. “You want to draw me? Like that?” Someone else drew him once, he thinks. Someone thought he was—

Luke grins. “Well, it's up to you if you want to throw your panties at me.”

The Soldier throws his hoodie at Luke instead. By the time Luke gets it off his head, the Soldier's down to a tee-shirt, and Luke exclaims, “Holy shit, Manito! Is that body armor?”

“Prosthetic,” the Soldier says, and takes his shirt off.

Luke pulls a face. “Fucking _ouch_ , man. Okay, pants off or not, whatever, and then you'd better get your rig out, 'cause this is gonna take a while and I can see you twitching.”

The Soldier shoots up while Luke arranges some pillows for him to lounge all over. Luke positions him without really touching him, just little nudges. It's nice; nothing like the chair, where they pushed and shoved and moved him like a mannequin. He's in a moldy little room that smells like human sweat and cigarettes, but he wouldn't trade it for a clean HYDRA lab even if someone held a gun to his head. Another tick in his good-things-about-being-a-person column: being posed by pretty boys in heroin dens. Who'd have thought. He lays back and drifts.

Luke gets worked up by sketching, the Soldier learns, when he comes out of the clouds to a lapful of shirtless man and warm skin under his hands. Luke is touching his chest, his shoulders, his scar. It feels nice, but touching Luke feels better. The Soldier moves his hands, counting vertebrae and ribs, fascinated. Luke's skin is smooth as butter except for a scar over his right kidney, and when he rubs his fingers over it Luke makes a pleased noise. It must be the heroin, the Soldier thinks, the rising euphoria in him, and then Luke asks, “You like kissing?” and he wonders if it's something else.

“I think so,” he says.

Luke grins down at him. “You _think_ so? Well, don't I feel special. Wanna find out?”

Kissing is almost as good as heroin. Luke's mouth is very soft, and the Soldier can taste oranges when he swipes his tongue up behind Luke's front teeth, exploring. Luke seems happy to allow it, letting the Soldier touch him anywhere his skin's exposed—seems happy to return the favor. The Soldier relaxes in increments when he realizes Luke isn't going to touch him below the waist. He learns what Luke likes; kisses the corners of his mouth, sucks on his lower lip. Luke hums.

“Want to draw you some more,” Luke murmurs against his mouth, and something about it distorts, turning to stereo, going through him hot and cold. The Soldier says, unbalanced: “Later,” and kisses Luke's chin, open and easy, trying to fall back into himself. Luke's fingers on the Soldier's scar help, stroking along the warps and wefts, an odd unexpected pleasure tugging at his spine. It surprises him, that anything they did to him could feel good.

When the shivering starts, he assumes it's the drug shakes, but it hasn't been long enough; he just shot up. Luke pulls back a little. “You okay?”

“Dunno,” the Soldier manages. He sounds like he's drowning.

Luke's face creases in concern. “Hang on,” he says, and comes back with an old knitted blanket covered in cigarette burns. Luke wraps it around the Soldier and curls up with his head on the Soldier's arm, close enough to touch but not pinning him down. He's grateful and embarrassed at the same time; grateful, because Luke's clearly done this before, and embarrassed, because the _Soldier's_ done this before, and the last time involved a sixteen year old girl on too much ketamine. He tries to stop the shakes but his body isn't interested in quitting. The memory-feeling, roiling under his skin.

“Was it too much?” Luke asks. “Hey, no offense, it's just, you don't seem like you get to cuddle that often.”

“That can happen?” Hell, he's been shot, he's been starved, he's bled out nearly unto death, and this— _this_ is what lays him low? Incredible. He grits his teeth but they chatter anyway.

“Sure,” Luke says. “I know one girl, she came from this, like, totally broken home, nobody touched her _ever_ , and she made a friend after she wound up on the streets, and one day when they were saying goodbye her friend hugged her? You know, like you do. And she passed out.”

The Soldier presses his face into Luke's wiry hair, curling closer. Luke takes it for the hint it is, swinging both legs together over the Soldier's lap, pressing up along his side and draping an arm over his waist. The Soldier lets out air from the cramped places in his lungs. He feels like he used to feel in the chair, during his season of happiness: safe, monitored. Luke won't let anything bad happen. He tries to relax.

He comes out of a groggy half-sleep to Luke's dry fingers on his earlobe, tickling. The Soldier bats at him ineffectually, and Luke's palm comes to rest on his forehead.

“Hey,” Luke says gently. “I think you got a fever, flu-dude. Lucky for you I already schlepped through this one. Go home and get some rest, yeah?”

“Yeah,” the Soldier agrees, and lets Luke lever him to his feet. He's stable once he's upright, has no problem dressing himself despite the shivers, but he's tired in a way he's not familiar with—something more than drowsiness and less than burnt-out exhaustion, a heavy fog he could drape over himself at any time, the temptation to curl up on the damp floor and sleep for a week. There's a knock just as Luke is wrapping the gaudy blanket around the Soldier's neck like an enormous scarf.

“Hey, _viejos_ , you got pants on?” Tank calls through the door.

“Roger that,” Luke calls back. When Tank opens it: “Thanks for the plague vector, T.”

“Aw, fuck,” Tank says. “That's what you get for sleeping in the same room as the snot factories. C'mon, sweetheart. Couch time. Luke, baby, come with. Cruz still owes you birthday beats.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Luke says resignedly.

The Soldier manages a laugh, but the shivering comes up hard and sudden underneath it, and he jerks. Tank's steering him into the hall, Luke trailing behind, when the shakes turn into a sharp ache in his bones like someone's set fire to the marrow. He can't help grunting in pain; Tank's been teaching him how to express discomfort, and right now he hates it, hates that he's so much of a person that he'll cry out with it, hates that he can't swallow it down. Luke comes up beside him and touches his arm and says, “Manito?” The Soldier shakes his head once, hard.

By the time they get to the end of the hall, his muscles are cramping like they're trying to break out of his skin. He can't help the little animal noises his throat makes any more than he can stop the convulsions. Tank supports his weight, presses her hand to his forehead, her fingers to the vein in his throat.

“You been taking your hits regular, haven't tried anything new?”

“Same cut you used last night,” he says through his teeth. Tank only does heroin to sleep; she says it's the closest she gets to quitting. She says she likes to stay alert. He's glad of it now, even as he loses time, coming back to a body soaked with sweat, confused and horizontal. Somewhere above him, he hears Tank say, “Help me get him up.” He feels himself being moved.

Luke says, right in his ear: “Oh my god, he's so light, does he ever eat?” and Tank says, “Not really. Hey, baby boy, you're going for a ride, okay? We're gonna piggyback. I'm gonna hang onto your legs. You ever seen a baby koala? Holy _fuck_ they're cute, they hang onto their mamas, same way you gotta hang onto me, okay? Hang on like that.”

Tank stands up, and everything goes black.

 

☙

 

The Soldier wakes up thirsty.

The common room is empty, just him and the sofa and the sound of his own breathing echoing back to him. He can hear voices in the kitchen and two separate, discordant strains of music further off, pop battling hip-hop down the hall. Aside from being uncomfortably overheated under what he discovers is at least four blankets, he feels...all right. He's not shaking. He's not nauseated. His aches are normal aches. He sits up gingerly, and none of those statuses change. Someone must hear him moving, because the voices stop in the kitchen, and Tank is looming over him by the time he kicks the last blanket off his feet. She pushes him back down with a finger to the forehead; presses the back of her hand against his face, his ears. Checks his pulse at his wrist.

“Manito,” she says flatly.

“Tank,” he replies.

“The fuck was that, huh? You feel better?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I feel fine.”

Tank blows a raspberry and flops onto the other end of the couch. The Soldier pulls his feet out from under her butt. “I'm too old for this shit,” she says.

“Sorry, mom,” the Soldier says, and receives a glare that should set his clothes on fire. “I really am fine.”

“You're a high-maintenance piece of shit, is what you are. You're lucky you're cute. Elsewise, I mighta fed you to the kids by now.” She bares her teeth at him cheerfully. “Runt of the litter.”

“Hey!” someone shouts. “Manito's awake!” Half a dozen twitchy girls run into the room, patting his face, stroking his hair with their bony fingers. He freezes like a rabbit, petrified of moving too fast and knocking one of them over.

Tank watches with obvious delight until someone coughs into their elbow, and then she barks, “Hey, arright, get on out, you squidgy little germbags. Out! Go bug Amy, she got new nail stickers.” The girls make shrieking noises of various pitches and disappear.

“Oh, shit,” the Soldier says suddenly. He raises a hand to his forehead and almost misses. “Oh shit, Luke.”

“What?”

“Luke,” he says. He looks at her, wincing. “I fucked up our date. You set me up on a date and I fucked it up.”

Tank stares at him for so long he thinks he might have said something unforgivable without meaning to. Then: she makes a strange noise in her throat. A moment later, she's howling, shaking so hard she flops backwards on the couch, smacking his ribs with her foot, gasping for breath between gales of laughter.

Seven appears in the doorway and says: “ _¿Qué—?_ ”

Tank flings out the hand she isn't using to cover her eyes, pointing at the Soldier. “Date!” she yelps, and dissolves all over again.

Seven rolls her eyes and puts her tattooed hands in the air. “ _Madre de Dios_ ,” she implores the ceiling, “ _Sálvame de mujeres histéricas_! ” and leaves.

“I'm going,” the Soldier warns, not meaning it at all. “Right now. I'm going back to DC. At least nobody made fun of me there.”

“Sweetheart, babycakes,” Tank says, flipping him off without sitting up, “I'd like to see you _try_.”

 

☙

 

When he returns from his panhandling rounds, there's one hell of a commotion on the balcony. Tank, Seven, three cholas, and two twitchy girls are clustered at the railing, swearing and laughing and pointing at something on the street. When Seven looks over her shoulder and they all realize he's behind them, the laughter intensifies, and Tank waves him forward. He has to use his elbows liberally to get through, and tries not to think about the weight limit of the creaking balcony.

Luke is standing in the parking lot with a bouquet of weeds wrapped in newspaper. When he sees the Soldier, he grins and waves. He cups one hand to his mouth and shouts: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

It must be a joke, because the women lose their collective minds. Pleased and embarrassed in equal measure, the Soldier resolves to shut everybody up, and swings over the balcony, planting his feet on the edge before sliding his hands to the base of the railing. The hardest part is landing on the next balcony, but shimmying down the railing isn't too bad. He drops off the lower balcony with only a moderate increase in pain, bruisey aches through his shoulders and the bones of his right hand. Luke is there in a moment, the bouquet forgotten on the ground, his hands on the Soldier's face. From the second floor, he hears whooping, and then exaggerated gagging noises when Luke kisses him. The Soldier rubs his thumbs up under Luke's shirt. Soft skin. If this is the reward he gets for showboating, he'll climb down taller buildings than this.

“You scared a year off my life!” Luke says when he pulls back, but he sounds more gleeful than angry. “Yo, Butch Cassidy, you don't need to impress me none!”

“You brought me flowers,” the Soldier says, like it's any kind of justification for his compulsions.

“Wow, yeah, okay. Sure,” says Luke. “I'd hate to see what you'd do if I brought you diamonds.”

“Who do you want me to kill?” the Soldier asks. He doesn't want to, not after Tank told him he didn't have to, so it's half a test and half a joke. It feels good to be able to do that, to run an experiment with words, but he doesn't know how Luke will respond, and feels himself go tense a moment before Luke laughs, big and startled, and it drains out of him in one long wave from neck to feet.

“C'mon,” Luke says. “Let's get away from the hecklers. You like movies? My crew wants to meet you and Avi's running a film night.”

The Soldier kneels down and rescues the bouquet, tucking it between two loose bricks near the door for safekeeping. He picks out a yellow dandelion and tucks it over his left ear. On impulse, he tucks another behind Luke's. When Luke grins wide and offers his hand, the Soldier takes it. The subdued sensation from the metal annoys him, so he switches sides, and startles at the giddy prickle he feels on the back of his neck when Luke rubs his fingertips deliberately against the dry webbing between the Soldier's fingers. He doesn't think anyone has ever touched him there; not bare-handed, at least, and certainly never outside the context of cleaning gunpowder or blood from the places where it accumulates, the pits and valleys of the skin. Luke turns south and the Soldier follows.

“So Tank gave me the shotgun talk while you were out cold,” Luke says. When the Soldier shoots him a look so baffled it can't possibly be misconstrued, Luke says: “Oh! It's when somebody who looks after somebody tells somebody _else_ that if they make somebody sad—”

“She threatened you?”

“No, no—well, yeah, but it's a friendly kinda threaten,” Luke says quickly. “She'll probably do it to you too, about me. It's just a way of letting us know she cares.”

“Sure,” the Soldier says, not entirely sure he understands. “Tank knows I can defend myself, right?”

Luke grins at him blindingly. “Even the toughest dudes have squishy hearts, man.”

The Soldier grunts in acknowledgment, if not in comprehension.

The point of the gathering doesn't appear to be meeting the Soldier, since no one asks him any questions, and it doesn't seem to be much about the films either. Half the attendees are asleep or high, stretched out on stacks of grubby blankets in the corners of the room, and the rest are talking, reading, or embarking on the early stages of sex. The person Luke introduces as Avi—the Soldier can't pin down a gender, and Luke pointedly doesn't specify—moves in concentric circles around the room, touching shoulders, patting heads, checking the occasional pulse. The Soldier wonders if Avi is like Tank; not so much a leader as a provider, someone who holds an umbrella, a safe place for the vulnerable or the lonely. While Luke settles with his head on the Soldier's thigh, yellow flower still firmly in place behind his ear, falling asleep despite the loud music and louder explosions bellowing from the television's tinny speakers, the Soldier wonders which Luke is. Vulnerable or lonely. Which _he_ is. A bit of both, maybe. He supposes maybe everyone is, in some way or another, or has been. A film, a breakfast table; excuses to make caring easier to swallow, he thinks, as Avi comes around again with a smile directed at Luke's head and a long-fingered hand stroking the Soldier's hair out of his face. He doesn't know how, but he wants to be like them. He wants to be a safe place too.

With no idea how long he'll be here and not enough heroin to get through the whole night unscathed, he shoots up miniature doses at regular intervals, riding the shakes into the early morning hours, an edgewise nauseated high he's never felt before and halfway hopes he'll never feel again, even as it spirals up into a knife-sharp rapturous _aliveness_ , all his nerves buzzing with the need to move. When Luke wakes up, the Soldier drags both of them to their feet, swaying not with the unbalanced yaw of the drunk but the purposeful flow of the dancer, footsure. He's never danced before, couldn't say what it entails, but he wants: and Luke grins and sways against him, pushing him outside. They step over sleeping bodies and a watchful half-bald dog, stifling one another's laughter. Luke's palm damp on the Soldier's mouth, metal clicking off Luke's front teeth when the Soldier reaches out unthinking. Luke's loud “ha!” in the night where it doesn't matter—“Come on!” The slap of their feet on the pavement.

The moon is a few days off from full in the clear sky, leaning towards the horizon and still bright enough to see by on streets with broken lights, at least until Luke runs into a dark alley and all but disappears. The Soldier flails out and catches the back of Luke's shirt, hanging onto it as they run. Nearly sends them both toppling when Luke stops and they crash together, but Luke's hauling them through an empty door frame, riding their combined momentum inside. They hit a wall and bark laughter like it's been smacked out of them. Panting, before they climb the stairs. It's the roof Luke takes him to, after an endless climb, made longer by the way they stop every few flights to shove and wrestle, swatting at each other like cats. Philly by moonlight is beautiful, the Soldier discovers, when they burst into the air and catch themselves on the concrete railing: buildings washed in silver over the black streets, under the stars. Shaking, panting, his chest aching where his heart is hammering away, he's drenched in what feels like four separate temperatures of sweat but all of it's oddly at a remove, like he's somewhere else, uncaring.

A commotion in the alley below, and the Soldier leans out over the edge, wary. It's a fight; young men scrambling like ants two dozen floors down, shouting and throwing more or less coordinated punches. One of them already lays insensate on the ground. Another sweeps through the throng of them with a baseball bat, clearing a wobbly line. They mob back together after the bat flails clear, unimpressed.

Luke's hands slide around the Soldier's waist from behind. He presses his cheek against the Soldier's neck and murmurs in his ear, warm: “Do you know what they call Philly?”

“What?”

“The City of Brotherly Love,” Luke says, and the Soldier laughs.

It's nearing dawn when Luke brings him home, and he's startled to see that Queenie is waiting in the doorway of La Cueva, backlit, her arms crossed and feet planted wide. Luke stops dead when he sees her, all the way on the other side of the empty lot, like she's aiming a gun at his head. Luke clears his throat and says, “Well, Her Majesty is watching, I'd better send you off like a gentleman.”

“As opposed to what?” the Soldier asks.

Luke grabs the Soldier's left hand. His eyes are—oh. The Soldier might be able to figure this one out on his own. He turns just enough to block Queenie's view with his body. The Soldier can't help making a noise when Luke bites his thumb; he can't quite feel it, and it's strange, like putting his left hand in a pool of fresh blood, a warm and dampened drone under the plates. Pressure, when Luke closes his lips. Removing a splinter, except the splinter is the Soldier's whole arm. He shivers and steps back before it can become a shudder. Luke grins and walks backwards, hands clasped at his nape and a supremely satisfied expression on his face. The Soldier waves until Luke heads east, jogging into the dark.

When the Soldier tries to go inside, Queenie doesn't move an inch. Under her iron scrutiny, the Soldier finds himself with his hands tucked behind his back and his shoulders squared, feeling calm for all that it seems he's about to be punished.

“Upstairs,” Queenie says at last. Cruz, book abandoned in her lap, eyebrows almost at her hairline, watches them go from the guard armchair.

The Soldier trails Queenie to the second floor. Asks, bewildered: “Am I in trouble?”

“If you were in trouble, it would have been Tank,” says Queenie. She pushes open her door and makes shooing noises. The Soldier likes Queenie's room, normally. She keeps it very clean. It's usually bright and cheerful. Now, it feels watery-thin with anticipation. Queenie sits on her mattress and pats the blanket with a pointed look. The Soldier sits.

“What do you think of Luke?” Queenie says.

The Soldier blinks at her several times before he can answer. “He's—nice. Uh, very nice. I like his drawings and how he never tries to touch my dick.”

Queenie, for a moment, looks as though she's about to laugh, and then like she's about to cry, and then her face goes perfectly blank. The Soldier's struggling to interpret it when she says, “What are your intentions?”

“I don't know,” is startled out of him. What does she want him to say? “I don't—” And panic seals his throat.

Queenie's carefully composed expression crumbles. “Oh, Manito, dear, I didn't mean to put you in a corner. I only wanted—well, to be a busybody, I suppose, but I'm so very fond of you, and so very fond of Luke, and it makes me queasy thinking of either of you getting hurt.”

Relief feels like a hammer. The Soldier lets out a breath and flops back on Queenie's yellowing bedspread, hands over his face. “Shit, I thought you were—this is the _shotgun talk_.” Queenie makes a startled noise. He adds, “Luke tried to explain, he said, said Tank might—”

“Tank was going to,” says Queenie. “I convinced her I might be more— _tactful_ —!” The Soldier peels his hands off his face in time to see her laugh. “Look how wrong I was!”

“It's okay,” he says. “I was just.” He touches his throat; rubs. “Confused. I like him. I don't want anything bad to happen to him. Is that what you...”

Queenie sits up straighter, leaning over him, delighted. “Do you think you might love him?” she asks, then looks distressed. “Do you know what love—how it feels to—”

“I know what love is, I'm not a child,” he says, but he _sounds_ like a child, snappish, and adds: “It's when you care about somebody a lot. When you'd—die for them, I guess.” Isn't that what people are always doing, in books and movies? Dying for people they love? “I love you and Tank and the girls,” he says.

“Mm. See,” says Queenie, “I think that's bollocks, myself. When people say they'd die for you, they're forgetting how difficult it is to live for somebody. Dying is a one-time thing. It's easy. Living is so much harder.”

He thinks about arguing with her, but it's a belligerent impulse, unhelpful; dying only seems to be hard for _him_. Regular people make dying seem simple. Then he thinks about what Queenie left behind, somewhere in England, and why she never talks about it. Safety. Her kids. Whatever turned her into a tiger that tries to hide its claws. Yeah, he thinks: living is much harder.

“I think I could,” the Soldier says. He looks at her. “Maybe. I don't know. I like him.”

“You did say.” Queenie sighs brightly, and then claps her round little hands. “Young love! Oh, the thought! You'll make a crone's frigid old heart melt right out of her chest, talking like that. You know what they say about starting a fire in the wilderness.”

“No,” he says. “What?”

Queenie smiles innocently. “Rub two boy scouts together.”

He laughs so loud she has crawl over him and cover his mouth with both hands so he doesn't wake anyone up, convulsing on her yellow bedspread, sweat on the back of his neck. It's only when the laughter's finally drained out of him that he realizes how crushingly tired he is, how long he's been shaking and running through the night, and feels his eyelids come down like shutters. Queenie pats his cheek and lays down beside him, curling her creaky body close against his; he runs hot and all the women seem to know it. He probably smells terrible, he almost manages to say, he smells like an animal and she shouldn't put her head near his armpit, but he falls asleep instead to the sound of her humming, low, a tune he almost thinks he remembers.

The Soldier wakes up alone, god knows how many hours later. The sun's up mid-sky, is about all he can tell from the mattress, and three or more girls are singing together nearby, out of tune but with great passion. He can smell burnt rubber. In the room next door, there's a loud thump, and an explosion of giggles.

It's a world of dizziness, trying to sit up, and a hell of a time getting there, with muscles that don't seem willing to put up their half of the bargain. It takes him three increasingly undignified attempts to get his feet under him, and what feels like a disproportionate amount of effort to stay vertical once he's there. The world goes white at the edges, then gray, and he's almost certain he's going to pass out before it recedes. God, he's a wreck—one single night of running amok and he's paying for it in spades. It feels like being sick all over again. It's been too long since he shot up, but his hands are shaking so badly he can't even unzip his kit, so he staggers down the hall in search of somebody he trusts.

“Where's Tank?” he asks the first girls he meets. One of them shrugs; another points down; a third says, “You cool, bro? You sick?” and gestures at her face. The Soldier waves her off and turns onto the stairs. Two cholas brush past him on their way down, their heels crack-crack like drumsticks against the wood.

He's on the third step when it hits him.

Water against the back of his skull. Something moving, liquid, under his skin, pouring from crown to nape and turning cold against his spine, and he stumbles. Tilts into the wall on his right side and chokes in confusion; again, higher and longer, when he can't move his head. Words won't come when he tries to speak. The chola two steps further down spins when he hits the wall, leaping up and under his metal arm just as whoever's behind him grabs the collar of his hoodie, arresting his forward momentum before he's aware it's begun. Pins and needles in his feet, crawling up his legs. He stares wide-eyed when the chola's mouth moves: she's speaking Spanish, he _knows_ Spanish, but he can't understand. The sounds she's making like reverb from a subwoofer in a far-off car. He thinks her name is Paz. They've never spoken and she's holding him up in a stairwell. His shoulder's smudged her perfect eyeliner across her cheek. Her lipstick, at the corner of her mouth. She looks like she's been in a fight. She looks like he's punched her.

 _Hell_ , he thinks, shocky-clear, as he loses control of his left leg: _Oh, this is bad_ , and he goes down despite the best efforts of two muscle-ropey young women. He's blocking the stairwell, he realizes, frightened. He's blocking—nobody's going to be able to use the stairs. Someone's going to be angry. Pins and needles in his chest, his neck. He has to get up. A garble of sound in his mouth when he tries to say so. He has to get up, or Pierce will—

 

☙

 

He's thinking about something, in the woozy moments before his upper brain function really engages. His brain snagging on a memory like cloth on a nail: the crate of books, and his too-soft hands, and the cigarettes in his pocket. He was dreaming about it, maybe. The same scrap of movement looping over and over, a shift like he's standing, wood digging into the bones of his hips. There was something he was trying to remember. He was speaking to someone. There was something he wanted to say. He spends a while longer drifting through half-formed images and scraps of imagined conversation before a sharp _crack!_ of sound snaps him fully awake. He hisses in pain and immediately shuts his eyes. The overhead light is like a knife.

He tries and fails to sit bolt upright when he realizes: there's no overhead light in the common room. This is—he feels around, smacks the wall with his metal hand; hears paper tear. This is _Tank's_ room. Why is he in Tank's bed?

Lifting his head sends a wave of pain and nausea through his body. No windows; he couldn't tell what time it is even if he could see. There's a pile of blankets on top of him, but he's not sweating. He manages to shift one leg: oh. He is, apparently, naked. Moving his right hand brings him up against something soft and round under the sheet he's laying on, like a tube of foam. The hell is—

He tries again to sit up, and the pain smacks a groan out of him. He still can't open his fucking _eyes_.

The quick patter of footsteps outside the door. A pause, and then the girl is gone, hollering somewhere down the hall: “Tank! He's awake! Tank!” The Soldier concentrates on breathing. One-two-three-four in, one-two-three-four out.

He opens his eyes to hair-thin slits and catches himself on an inhale, coughing in surprise. Tank's sitting on the edge of the bed. He squints at her; he missed the part where she came in. Everything feels tilted sideways.

“Oh good,” she says flatly. “You're not dead.”

“Can't die,” he croaks, mush-mouthed. The old joke that wasn't. The Nurse might have smiled, but Tank doesn't. She looks furious.

“Not what it looked like,” she says. “Fuck, baby boy, you scared the shit outta me. Twice, I thought, well, that's it, he's goin'—and you just crawled back up like the devil booted you outta hell. Don't you fuckin' do that to me, _comprende_? Don't you ever do that again.”

He shakes his head, which is a mistake.

“I thought you were having a stroke, but Queenie said you weren't,” Tank says. She pats the bed. “But nobody's disputing that you had two goddamn seizures. We had to put fuckin' _pool noodles_ under here so you didn't flail right outta bed. What the fuck was that, huh? I mean it, Manito, we gotta get to the bottom of this. You allergic to something?”

“Don't—think so.” He tries to think: did anyone touch him in Avi's squat, did he drink anything without thinking, was there something in the room, something in the heroin, something in—

“Oh,” he breathes.

“Yeah?”

“My arm.”

“Your what?”

“Dispensers, in the...” He makes an attempt to shrug the blankets off. “In here. Drugs. They had me on a lot of drugs, before I—there was a lot.” He manages to get his left arm palm up on top of the blankets, almost expecting it to look gangrenous, black and red, but it looks the same as ever. “A dispenser must have run out.”

“Withdrawal,” Tank sighs. “Plus the agonies. What the fuck. Okay. That's good to know, I _guess_. What happens when the rest of 'em run out?”

The Soldier just looks at her.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Tank says. “Whatever. So that's not fuckin' distressing at all. Let's hope the next one doesn't knock you this hard.”

The next one, he thinks privately, might actually manage to kill him.

“How long?” he asks.

Tank drums her knuckles on her knees in a pattern he can't follow, tension in her forearms. She says, like he hasn't earned it, “Just about four days. You ruined Christmas, you asshole.”

“Fuck,” the Soldier hisses.

“That's about the size of it, baby boy.”

Of all the things he should be concerning himself with over the following week, his living arrangements should be the least of his worries, but he's very uncomfortable with taking Tank's bed. He acquiesces after she describes in explicit detail what she'll do to him if he gets out of it for anything more strenuous than a piss. He still has to remind himself every time another set of twitchy girls come to peer at him from the doorway, kicking up panic for being useless, for not healing faster, for disappointing his handlers (stupid, _stupid_ ; he doesn't _have_ handlers, get it together), for being alone. He should be up and roaming and biting through the world, not convalescing in a bed with race-car sheets.

But he has to admit, she has a point. Between his general state of quasi-starvation and the recent episodes, he's lost so much body mass that there's a gap between his left shoulder and the metal cap, the skin underneath irritated and itchy and impossible to scratch. It's two full days before he can stand upright without swaying. It's another day still before Tank will let him shoot up, him stewing in his pain and boredom the whole time, but it's worth the wait. When the rush comes up his spine and the pain subsides, he manages to drink a whole mug of puréed soup without throwing up. Or so Tank says; he can't remember. All he remembers is the warmth.

Tank volunteers some of the calmer girls to come in and spend time with him so he doesn't go completely out of his tree. They bring him books. Sofie shyly reads one to him over four mornings, more words than he'd thought she was capable of stringing together at once, freezing wide-eyed like a rabbit whenever someone passes the doorway. Jude shares one earbud of her MP3 player with him while she composes music on graph paper. Amy bitches about her six awful boyfriends and paints his nails, mostly by virtue of the fact that he can't fight back. The older women take the evenings, for which he's wearily grateful. Even Luke comes to visit twice, chaperoned by a peacock-proud Tank and mock-grumpy Cruz. Luke kisses the Soldier's forehead and holds his hand, and the second time, he brings a sketch of Tank as a muscle-bound Cupid. Luke has to explain what the reference means, but when the Soldier gets it, he laughs until he hurts. Tank tapes it up on her door like it's an advertisement.

They don't talk about what might happen if another dispenser empties.

Tank's lounging on the bed like a panther tonight, on her back, grimacing at the pages of a novel with its cover missing and batting at him every once in a while with her foot. He's dozing, and she disapproves. She's convinced that only old men are asleep by 8:00 at night, sick or not. There's no point in telling her he's been conscious since the fifties. He swats her back halfheartedly and tries not to think about the thing that's been bothering him for days. It doesn't work very well.

He's thinking—trying not to think—about HYDRA. Desmond's fault. Desmond listened to a radio show about ethics, and got confused and nostalgic about his university days, and had started asking the Soldier questions he didn't know how to answer. They've been rattling around his brain ever since, more than ever now that the Soldier has nothing else to occupy his brain. Things that Desmond had needed to explain to the Soldier in little words, like he was the basest sort of idiot, like a child. Cause and effect. Right and wrong. Things regular people know, even if they ignore them, things HYDRA scrubbed out of his brain along with everything else. He doesn't want to hurt people any more: he knows that. But there's reasons why nobody should, reasons that make him feel small and scared and ashamed of himself.

So: it's unavoidable. He's thinking about HYDRA. What they told him to do, and then what they had to force him to do. It wasn't good, was it? The things he did? If they had to make him do it, if they were scared of him thinking for himself, if they had to drug him and hurt him and burn him out of himself, it must have been wrong. It must have been—somehow contrary to the person he was before, if they had to do that. They must have been doing something wrong. And if they were bad, then he's been killing good people for years, people who didn't deserve to die, people who were just in the way, people like Tank and Queenie and the Adelitas, who might not be perfect but have the right to—to continue. Dead, dozens of them. Hundreds. How many decades? How many people?

They tried to make him help them kill millions, he realizes for the first time, with a wash of horror. The guns. The helicarriers. If Rogers hadn't distracted him—

He swallows bile.

When Tank finally throws her book across the room, the Soldier says, “Do you think what we did was moral?” The word comes out of his mouth strangely. In Desmond's accent, he realizes; foreign in his mouth.

“What now?”

“Killing Gabriel,” he says.

Tank props herself up on her spiderwebbed elbows and peers at him. “You been reading too many newspapers.”

“I'm serious.”

“Was it _moral_?” She squints at the ceiling. “I dunno. Define your terms.”

“Was it right,” he says. “Was it—did it make things right?”

“In, what, a cosmic sense?”

The Soldier makes a frustrated noise. He's never needed to ask a question like this; he doesn't have the language for it.

“Killing isn't good,” he says at last, and Tank starts saying, “Yeah, uh, welcome to planet Earth, we've been expecting you—” before he talks right over her: “But that was worse.”

Tank shuts up.

“That was worse,” the Soldier says. “Wasn't it? What he did to Sofie? Isn't that worse than killing? Hurting somebody for no reason, or because you want to hurt somebody else?” His hands shake, even the metal one. “Hurting someone who doesn't understand _why—_ ”

“Whoa, whoa,” Tank says, grabbing his left hand. He hadn't noticed he was digging the fingers into his flesh wrist any more than he noticed her sitting up. “This ain't just about Sofie, is it?”

He presses his lips together and stares at his lap.

“Baby boy,” Tank says quietly, “Did somebody hurt you? Like that?”

When he turns his head, she grabs his chin and makes him look at her. He looks at everything but her eyes: her wide sharp jaw, her expressive mouth, her nose with the bump where it's been broken at least once. There's a scar on her left temple like a splash of bleach. It's a hard face, a well-used face. He can't imagine her looking much different in ten years than she does now.

Her thumbnail digs into the bone of his chin.

“I don't know if I liked killing before they made me do it,” he says.

Tank lets go of him.

“I don't like it anymore, but I liked killing people for them,” the Soldier says. “I was good at it, and I liked doing something I was good at, and I thought it was right. Or I—didn't think. I don't know. If I wasn't like that, and they made me into something different, then—are they worse? If I didn't like it before?”

“Did they,” Tank grits out, “Hurt. You.”

“Yeah,” he says. “They hurt me.” He remembers Harrison suddenly, out of context and unwanted; her eyes when she saw the photographs of Townsend's body. She believed in what they were doing. Was she a bad person? She was so _kind_ to him. He scrubs the back of his hand over his mouth and looks down. When Tank doesn't respond: “They said it was making the world safer.”

“Hurting you?”

“Everything.” The Soldier twists the sheets in his hands. “That's why—I wanted to know. If we killed Gabriel for the wrong reasons, then we're no better than them. But if it was moral—”

Tank grimaces. “But you didn't do it because it was moral, right? At the time? You killed him 'cause you wanted a hit.”

The Soldier flinches, and then he grunts, a humorless little sound. “Guess I'm not a good person, then.”

“Oh, fuck that,” Tank snaps. He looks up, startled. “ _Fuck_ that. You wanna know why? 'Cause you asked her fucking _name_ , sweetheart. You stood in that awful goddamn room and asked her name before you went out and OD'd that no-good baby-raping son of a bitch. You didn't have to do that. And then you sold that crack to help pay for her hospital bills—that's what the money was for, yeah? You never said, but I figured. You coulda run off with the cash and fucking high-tailed it to wherever, but you came back to my dirty fucking squat and helped me make scrambled eggs for a bunch of strung-out kids, you make Luke look like he's walkin' on sunshine, so don't you _ever_ fucking tell me you're a bad person, Manito, I will fucking _cut_ you. Good ain't something you _are_. It's something you _do_.”

He stares with his mouth open.

“Tank,” he says slowly.

“No,” she growls, “No, you can fucking well—”

“I'm going to hug you now,” he says.

She's stiff as a board until he drops his head onto her shoulder, and then she relaxes like all of her strings have been cut, gripping him tight. He can smell the vinegar-sourness of a body that doesn't get washed often enough. Chemicals under her skin, natural and artificial, not enough of the former and too much of the latter. She smells like she's starving. Like rotting meat, just faintly, with a strange sweet edge. He can't smell himself, but he suspects he's no different.

Tank sighs against his neck. “What's going on in there, Manito, huh?”

“I hate this,” the Soldier mumbles. Tank rubs a hand over his back. “Waiting. I'm not driving, I just have to—sit here and think about all the bad things I've done.”

“The bad things you did,” says Tank, “Or the bad things they made you do?”

A strange noise comes out of his throat, and then another. He jerks against her, breath hitching, the shakes moving up his spine to his shoulders.

He's crying.

He's never done this before, he thinks distantly, awed, even as he's thinking: he must have, in the before, in the wildcat days. It's something children do. He's seen the girls do it, and he'd thought it was just a simple biological reaction, but this isn't simple; it's wretched like a wound, gallons of frustration and anger pouring from him, unstoppable. An avalanche of grief, escalating as it rushes downhill. He tries to take a deep breath and only succeeds in sobbing harder, a whole volley of ugly, wet sounds like something's being cut out of him. Some vital organ.

Tank's hands move on his spine. He gives himself over. It's like throwing up. You have to wait for it to be finished, and no force in the world can keep it in you.

When he can breathe again, he says, “I ruined your shirt.” He's disgusting; his face is soaked and his nose won't stop running. He wipes it on his right arm, grimacing.

“It died a noble death,” Tank says gravely. “Hello, gorgeous. BRB.”

She comes back with a warm towel and scrubs his face like he's a child. He shuts his eyes and lets her. He remembers another woman, another wet cloth, another place. For a moment, he feels frightened, stuck in time, doomed to repeat the same motions over and over, the same stories, the same people, and then reality locks into place: Tank's nothing like the Nurse, and tears are nothing like blood, at least not someone else's. They taste different on the tongue, but there's a shared component. Salt, he thinks. Tears and blood and the sea.

He sighs.

“Penny for your thoughts,” says Tank.

“I,” the Soldier says, “Need go back to Base.”

 

☙

 

Tank's not stupid; she immediately sees the logic. He can't risk another dispenser emptying, especially if the next one is a more volatile drug, considering his already overtaxed system. He doesn't know if it was the days of tremors or just simple wear-and-tear, but his joints hurt worse, bad enough at night that he can't sleep without doubling up his evening hit. Food's more problematic than ever. He might not survive another round of withdrawal, or it might cripple him for the rest of his unnatural life. If he can infiltrate the old base, if he can get them to let him in, he can access Zola's coded notes or whatever patchwork user manual they cobbled together under Pierce, and then maybe he can figure out how to open up the arm and take out the dispensers. It's a better idea than waiting around for the inevitable, at any rate.

But Tank argues—validly, which is even more frustrating—that he can't hitch to Maine and take out a military base if he can't walk around the block, so it's another three days before she'll even consider helping him on his way. Three days of laying on the couch, annoying the Adelitas, haunting the kitchen—playing food roulette with whatever suspect take-out the twitchy girls bring home. Tank's right; he can't make the trip until he has his strength back. She's right.

He has to tell himself that, after.

Tank's pouring bacon grease into a margarine container and the Soldier is picking green onions out of a day-old box of rice when a twitchy girl comes barreling up the stairs and says, “There's a big guy downstairs asking for Manito.”

A big guy—not Luke, then. The Soldier hasn't been by to see Luke in his own squat yet, and he feels bad about it, because Luke promised to show him more of his art. He makes a mental note to fix that later today. Flicking an onion at the twitchy girl: “He say what he wanted?”

Tank says, “Hang on, did he ask for Manito? By name?”

“Uh, _no_ ,” the girl says archly. “How many white dudes know Manito? He said his friend, the guy with the metal arm.”

The Soldier stands up. “I'd better—”

Someone shrieks downstairs. Tank—younger, sober—is out the door before the Soldier manages to kick his chair out of the way. Even the twitchy girl makes it out of the room before him. He stumbles on the first step, nearly taking them face-first. It takes all his concentration to make it down without snapping his own neck. Gunfire roars as he hits the last step.

He goes in screaming.

He takes down the first operative with his bare hands. He liberates a tac knife from the second one. They're in mufti, all of them, trying to blend in, minimal body armor, unprepared—amateurs. Chickens running around with their heads cut off. Between gutting one and slitting the throat of the next, teeth gritted against the searing pain in his bones, he wonders if there's even a mission control anymore, or if somebody in what's left of STRIKE just had a bright idea. He catches an elbow to the head. A knee to the stomach. He can taste blood on his teeth when he stabs an agent through the jaw. It's probably his own.

When it's over, the Soldier collapses. Staggers sideways right into a wall, denting it with his metal shoulder, sliding to the ground. He pants and pants and can't get enough oxygen. The world goes fuzzy and dark. His throat is a line of fire.

In the alley, through the open door, he can hear Seven yelling.

“And you thought they'd fucking _ask nicely_?”

“They said they'd just come and take him away! They said he was dangerous!” Amy, he realizes. Oh, that hurts. It hurts more that he's not surprised.

“People like that don't leave witnesses,” Seven hisses. “You don't trust strangers, you don't trust men, you don't trust fucking _anybody_ except your _family_ , you fucking snitch, this is on _your head_!”

“I'm sorry—”

“Don't be sorry,” Seven says. “Be _better_.” A pause, and then the sound of a fist meeting a wall. “Get out,” Seven says. “Get the fuck out of my city. If you're lucky, you'll get out alive.” Scuffling. “Yeah! You better run! Run faster, you piece of shit! Oh god. Oh, Jesus.”

A thump next to his head. He looks blearily up at Seven, kneeling beside him. She's crying silently, wet down her broad face. She reaches out and touches his cheek with the back of her hand. Somewhere in the room, someone is screaming. Someone else is crying.

“How many?” the Soldier croaks.

“I don't know,” she says. “All of theirs. You got them all, you crazy motherfucker. Oh fuck, Manito, I don't know what to do. What're we going to do?”

“Help me up,” he says.

As these things go, it's not a great way to discover he's been shot: left thigh, left pelvis. Through-and-through in the leg, a bullet caught in the hip. Pain sears through him, nearly sending him back to the floor when his left leg tries to collapse. A moment later, he stops caring about that.

The room is a bloodbath.

“Where's Tank?” he demands, stumbling. Seven catches him before he can go down. “Where the fuck's—” She points but he can't tell them apart, he can't see, and then he can—he can, oh fuck, there she is, bloody froth on her lips bubbling when she breathes, somebody else's brain on her shoulder, on the Mexican rug—

There's nothing in his stomach to throw up, but he gags anyway. Seven can't hold up his weight any longer. He goes to his knees. His thigh is bleeding sluggishly, already trying to heal inside. He doesn't want it to heal. Why should he have the privilege? He smacks his metal palm down on it, furious, snarling at the pain.

Tank's head flops in his direction when he crawls to her, her eyes quartz-glassy, but she blinks and it clears. She sees him but she doesn't try to talk. Vaguely, far away, he hears sobbing and swearing, feet on the staircase. A siren in the distance that can't possibly be for them, not yet. He rips Tank's shirt open, sees the holes they put in her. She coughs. He thinks she'll live. She'll live. She has to; she's Tank. He pulls off his own shirt and wads it up, putting pressure on her abdomen. Tank groans. Coughs hard.

He fights when someone tries to pull him off of her, but Paz puts her hands between his on the bloody shirt, and he's too weak to resist the next tug. It's Seven, hauling him to his feet, or trying: he falls over, stumbling like a drunk on a ship. The room spins. He hears someone scream _María!_ It's Sofie, Sofie shrieking _María! María!_ like she's gone mad, struggling in some tall girl's grip, and then he realizes: it must be Tank she's calling for, Tank's name, the one her mother gave her when she was small and bloody and new. Blood to blood. The thing that comes out of his throat isn't a laugh; isn't anything at all.

A mechanical squeal draws his attention, even over the sound of three frantic teenagers yelling at emergency services in Spanglish. A radio, half-hidden under an agent's thigh, blinking red. When he reaches over to smash it to pieces, the shriek gets higher. He pauses. When he leans away, it gets quieter.

“Oh fuck,” the Soldier whispers.

“What is it?” Seven says hollowly. She comes to stand beside him. Her hands shaking: her arms, all the way up to her elbows.

“It's a tracker,” he says. He covers his face with his hands. “Oh _fuck_ , that stupid kid didn't need to sell us out. They knew exactly where I was. They've known for _months_.”

“Who?”

“HYDRA,” he says.

Seven smashes the screaming device under her boot. She kicks what's left viciously across the room and stands panting, making little animal noises. The girls who aren't crying or helping someone stare up at her with huge eyes. Swaying on his knees, the Soldier fights the urge to fall flat on the floor and never get up.

“You've got to go,” Seven says. When she turns around, there's something terrible and dead in her face. She's stopped crying. Her eyes are dark red from one side to the other, like all the vessels have burst. “You know that, right? You've got to go. If you don't go get that shit out of your arm, they'll keep finding you. Right?”

“Yeah,” the Soldier says. He shakes himself all over like a dog. “I can't—I can't just _leave_ all of you, I—”

“You've gotta _go_ ,” Seven says, voice cracking.

He realizes: because he'll lead more of them back here if he doesn't.

He'd rather set himself on fire.

The Soldier finds one of the agents whose neck he broke, the only one who's moderately clean. They're close enough to the same size, so he takes the man's clothes and frantically scrubs the blood from his face and hands with the man's undershirt before he changes. He ignores the girls who watch him, the ones who try to speak to him, the one who clutches at his arm; the one who might be Sofie, but he'll never know, because someone pulls her away. Four of the agents have wallets; three of them have cash. He takes all of it, and all their car keys, all of their knives, two of their guns, and as much ammunition as he can fit in his pockets. He limps away as fast as he can, and he doesn't look back. He can't.

There's a truck and two Humvees at the head of the alley. The second set of keys he tries turns the truck's engine over, and he lets it run while he checks for bugs and trackers, crushing four of them between his metal fingers before he gets behind the wheel. As he pulls out of the alley, burning rubber, he hears more sirens, louder howls, overlapping. The only way he knows how to drive falls under the umbrella of getaway tactics, so he steers like a grandmother once he's clear of the neighborhood and watches other vehicles for cues. When he starts drifting, he punches his thigh and then the radio button, cranking some dead man's terrible playlist as high as it'll go.

He's a mile outside the city before he realizes he didn't take any shoes.

The Soldier swaps plates in Newark when the shakes threaten to send him off the road. He skulks back alleys until he finds someone who'll trade him drugs for one of his guns. The sick weight of shame sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach when he has to shoplift a pharmacy to get the rest of his works. He shoots up just enough to hold off the agonies, and then he gets back in the truck. Heroin jitters, digging the bullet out of his hip, and another plate change force him to pull over three more times. On the road to Manchester, he nearly blacks out, staying awake only by virtue of tugging his own hair savagely at the roots; the wound in his thigh is too well-healed to be of any more use.

It's a miracle he gets to the coast of Maine in one piece.

The truck's clock says 23:17 when the Soldier pulls up in a marina parking lot and yanks out the keys. He lets himself rest his throbbing head against the steering wheel for a moment—just for a moment. It's a mistake. The second he stops moving and takes a deep breath, those ugly gulping sobs are back, shaking his whole body, curling him around his own aching belly. It hurts him so bad, a fire in all his bones, in the wet tissues between, places that shouldn't be able to hurt as viciously as they do. Every sob feels like being shot.

Oh fuck, Tank.

Oh fuck, _Sofie_.

He lets himself have another full minute of grief and terror and self-pity, and then he kicks his way out of the truck.

 

☙

 

In the days of Townsend and Murray, they never put him on a ferry. Helicopters took him back and forth between missions, mostly, and the occasional Osprey. The Soldier has little experience in the water. He's not entirely sure he can swim. Aside from the clusterfuck in the Potomac he barely remembers, he's certainly never tried.

Piloting a tiny motorboat through the New England fog at midnight—on the tail end of a high and raw-starving from the two attempted meals he'd lost on the road—might be the worst thing he's had to do since that heinous fortnight in Chile where everyone in STRIKE Alpha got sick at once. Come to think of it, it rained torrents that whole mission, flooding in the streets up to their knees, so although this one is categorically more awful, it might actually involve less water.

He has to joke about it, or he'll pitch himself off the side of the boat and be done with it.

The Soldier doesn't have to scale a cliff to get onto land, which is the first good thing that's happened to him in twelve hours. As he hauls his frozen bones up the beach, up the path someone carved decades ago, probably before foundations were ever laid for the buildings, he goes over his plan. Fake a malfunction, act like a poor mangled puppy, beg for maintenance. Get inside. Once inside, assess staff situation and determine best route of access to notes and/or manuals. Subdue where possible. He deeply, venomously doesn't want to kill more people, but he will if he has to. He will, won't he? He's capable; there's still blood under his nails. He's sure he can.

When he sees Base in the murky dawn, he almost drops to his knees.

It's been abandoned. Twenty years, if he had to guess, but he's no expert in concrete decay and growing things. The wildflowers in the fields are dead or dormant, hiding from the cold, but the grasses are thigh-high, and there's a smear of hardy greenery clinging to the roof. The doors are wide open as if to let in the breeze, just like they were during that last terrible spring. He can almost smell the pollen, even though frost is crunching under his bare feet and the sea spray in his hair is pulling the pre-dawn chill right into his bones. He can't tell if it's the heroin or the cold that's making him shiver harder.

He'd come to understand the passage of time under Townsend—how years moved forward, economies rose and fell, people got older, computers got smaller and bullets got bigger. He'd understood: time flows slowly, for regular people, while he'd leapt in and out of the river of it, punching through the world. So he understands this, the way time has passed here. Logical. Routine. Unobserved. None of it makes what he sees feel like any less of a violation.

It takes a gargantuan effort to walk through the main door, but once he's in, he makes a beeline for the archives. It's for nothing—the drawers are empty, cleaned out. It was obviously a rushed job, but thorough; although nothing has been left behind, half the drawers are hanging open, some pulled from their housings entirely. The armory’s been stripped just as bare. He finds a single shell casing on the floor, kicked under a bench, and strokes it with his thumb as he walks to the prep room. The chair is exactly where he remembers it.

It doesn't make sense, he thinks, as he approaches it, thumbing the casing. Wouldn't it have been more efficient to take everything, every nut and bolt, instead of building a new chair and a new halo? Maybe it was a new model waiting for him in that bank vault. So many improvements they couldn't reasonably apply them to the old one. So: here it is. Derelict, just like him. Waiting for someone to come and put it out of its misery. He pockets the casing and strokes his flesh hand over the headrest, where the leather is cracking for want of care.

Part of him wants to burn the whole thing to the ground. Part of him wants to stay, to sleep under the halo and forage for food and watch the wildflowers come back in the spring. Part of him wants to do both—set it ablaze, and just lay right down. The rational part of him knows he won't do any of those things; he can't stay, and he can't draw attention to his presence, and knowing his luck, he'd survive the fire, and spend some unthinkable stretch of time trapped in a charred cocoon, waiting for his skin to grow back, waiting for another STRIKE team to come and collect him. No, he'll search a little further, and then he'll force himself to leave. He already has a suspicion where the user manuals have gone.

He moves on for the sake of thoroughness. The smell Downstairs is revolting, and the Soldier is thankful he hasn't been able to eat. Hunger and pain make shimmying down the elevator cable a trial, but at least he won't be sick. He doesn't bother going into the labs, where the worst of it comes from, but at the very bottom, in the crematory, he finds three bodies that were never burned. Between the door seals and the absence of pests down here to eat their soft parts, they've desiccated like mummies. He doesn't recognize any of them. He didn't really expect to.

A search of the Nurse's office turns up nothing, and he thinks, _well, that's it, then_.

He's DC bound.

 

☙

 

An hour outside of Baltimore, deep in the arm, something whirs unhappily.

His body starts to shake.


	4. what resembles the grave but isn't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is distracted enough by hunger that he doesn't notice his door's ajar until his hand misses the knob.
> 
> Okay, he thinks.
> 
> Okay.
> 
> There's a few ways this can go.

After he leaves the bank vault, Steve drives for three hours. It's not that he doesn't want to go home, he just—can't. Yet. There's some part of him that knows he's being ridiculous, motoring around the outskirts of DC in the hopes he might spot a one-armed man, but he's not even certain that's what he's _doing_ , exactly, so much as avoiding going back to his life for a little longer. Back to the apartment where he'd spent two weeks searching for listening devices, after everything; where he'd destroyed nineteen bugs and took another month to convince himself it was clear, that not reaching a round number didn't mean he'd missed one. Back to the apartment that never fails to remind him of Bucky, because it's the only place Steve's lived where Bucky hasn't stood, and because there's still bullet holes of Bucky's making under a layer of plaster and paint.

He spends most of the drive thinking about Bucky. Steve's never said he wasn't a masochist.

Steve, if pressed, would say the one thing he wants most in the whole world is Bucky here, safe, happy—but the thing is, even if James Barnes appeared in Steve's apartment tonight, straight out of 1944, Steve still wouldn't know exactly what to expect.

Before the war, Bucky had been larger than life, a lightning bug, a big talker who never talked shit. A boy you'd have been happy sending your daughter to for a night of good, safe fun, because Bucky never met a girl he didn't see to the door with her virtue intact. Smart, and observant too, which wasn't the same thing; Steve had never needed to tell Bucky he didn't want to be coddled. Bucky just figured it out, the way he always did, that watchful eye he turned on the whole world with the aim to make it smile. He was, in short, the kind of guy Steve hears people joke about these days, the man who walks little old ladies across the street and gives up his seat on the bus and calls his elders 'sir.' Old-fashioned, Steve hears them call it, like good manners are a vaguely embarrassing custom they've left behind.

But after Azzano, Bucky was—different. Quieter, often to the point of total silence. He'd spend a week at a time not speaking unless spoken to. He had these moments where he seemed like himself, but too much: a loud, bold, too-bright stage version of himself, who flirted hard and punched harder. At the time, Steve had thought it was showmanship, but now, he realizes it was probably a form of coping. Weird things, too, like the month he suddenly spent trading every cigarette and favor he could drum up for a drop of booze, and then just as suddenly, stopped drinking altogether. And the time when huge, fresh-faced Private Calloway had put his hand on the back of Bucky's neck, comradely, and Steve had needed to take Bucky out at the knees to stop him from killing the poor kid. Bucky'd been so ashamed of himself afterward.

It wasn't anything you'd have noticed if you hadn't grown up with the guy—there were a few soldiers who twitched their way through meals, and a few more who woke up the camp screaming in the night, but Bucky hadn't been one of them. It was a small, subtle darkness, and Steve hadn't had the first idea how to dispel it besides sending Bucky home, but after the look of baffled, betrayed rage he'd received the one time he brought it up, Steve had never mentioned it again. It wasn't like Bucky's performance wavered, after all. If anything, according to his buddies in the 107th, he was better. Those near-death experiences, right? They sure can focus a man.

It wasn't any different from a thousand other soldiers struggling to stay upright after surviving terrible things, but it was tantamount to letting Bucky walk on broken feet, the way they all pretended not to see it, and Steve's not sure he'll ever be able to forgive himself for that.

But he can't flagellate himself forever; he has to go home eventually.

Steve checks his phone as he takes the stairs: a voicemail from Sharon's work cell and three missed texts from Sam, all of which he ignores for now, because he needs to get his head on straight before he can give answering a proper effort. Right now, all he wants is easy calories and a shower, in that order. He should have stopped for food after he left the vault, and he's paying for it now, a hollow feeling under his ribs and a headache threatening to hit migraine proportions. There's a certain irony to it—he'd had so many allergies before the serum, and an appetite that wouldn't have kept a mouse going, and now he's in a constant war of attrition with his own metabolism. He hopes it slows down as he gets older, maybe when the serum weakens. If. It's something he'd never even thought to ask Erskine: what's going to happen if I reach my eighties, Doc?

Steve is distracted enough by hunger that he doesn't notice his door's ajar until his hand misses the knob.

Okay, he thinks.

Okay.

There's a few ways this can go.

Bucky could be sitting at the kitchen table, his arm already healed, a cup of purloined coffee in his hand and a grin on his face, that particular wry curl that said: _hey, pal, sorry for busting in like this_ and didn't mean sorry at all, and Steve will say: _what do you remember?_ and Bucky—

No.

Bucky could be sitting at the kitchen table, a towel wrapped around his stump, a gun pointed at Steve's heart, that terrible dead blankness in his eyes like the bridge, like the helicarrier, the expression Steve's never been able to decide was better or worse than the trapped-animal terror Bucky wore later—

No.

Bucky could be sprawled on the living room sofa, bleeding out, feverish with infection, sweating right through the cushions and half out of his mind, and Steve will say: _I'm gonna call a friend, okay?_ and he'll touch Bucky's—

 _No_.

It might not even _be_ Bucky. It could be Natasha, testing him. It could be Fury, fucking with him. It could be HYDRA, being sloppy.

Steve takes a deep breath and pushes the door open smoothly. He catches it before it hits the wall, not trying to be particularly quiet, but not trying to startle anyone inside, either.

There's no one in the hall.

There's no one in the kitchen.

There's no one in the living room.

His heart is pounding and he's wound up tighter than a spring, so when a rough voice says “In here,” from the other end of the apartment, Steve nearly jumps out of his own skin. He gives up any pretense of stealth and heads down the hall.

Bucky is laying in the bathtub.

He looks... _awful_.

His skin has a gray, waxy pallor, and he looks starved. No— _wasted_ is a better word for it. Steve can count every rib, could probably sharpen knives on Bucky's hipbones; he hasn't seen anyone this emaciated since the war. Bucky's cupping his stump with his remaining hand, one foot resting on the edge of the tub beneath the faucet, the other propped up on the wall. No part of it looks comfortable, but his eyes are closed, and his forehead is smooth. What's left of his arm, cut off a few inches above the elbow, is a mess—a thick black tangle of sutures criss-crossing the end, and a ladder of thread going up the outside of the arm to the shoulder. It looks like he fell onto the saw sideways in addition to cutting off the end of his stump. The older scarring is catastrophic, like some terrible welding accident superimposed on a human body, a chemical spill in skin, and Steve remembers that the metal came up over the shoulder: Bucky would've had to peel it open like a tin can. The water around him is very faintly pink.

Bucky isn't looking, but Steve works to keep his face neutral anyway.

“Eight months I spent hoping to find you,” Steve says, leaning against the doorjamb, trying to sound casual, “And all I had to do was look in my bathtub?”

Bucky's shoulders jerk, and a quick rumble comes out of his chest. After a moment, Steve realizes it's a laugh.

“Are you actively dying?” Steve asks. “I mean, fair warning, I'm asking because I want to yell at you.”

“Can't run away,” Bucky says cheerfully. “Good time.” His voice is even worse than Steve remembers it from the helicarrier, when he'd sounded like he'd been scraping up language from the bottom of a well. Now, it sounds like he's been gargling gravel for weeks.

Steve opens his mouth; shuts it. That airy tone isn't sitting right. “Are you _okay_?”

“I may,” Bucky says distinctly, opening his eyes and addressing the ceiling, “Have taken four of the painkillers in your medicine cabinet.”

Steve sighs. Bucky doesn't seem bothered by either his own nudity or Steve's presence, so he comes over and sits on the edge of the tub. He props up his chin on one hand. “You know those are tailored for my metabolism, right? One's usually enough for anything short of a gut shot.” They'd developed them for him _after_ his gut shot, in point of fact, but the most he'd ever needed was two, on a particularly bad day.

The rumble again. “Yeah. Gathered.”

“Are you hurting any right now?”

“Sweetheart,” Bucky says, making Steve blink, “Last week I was practically running a heroin drip just to get some fuckin' sleep. I don't know what's in those pills, but believe you me, I'm feeling no pain.”

 _Heroin_ , god, Steve doesn't want to touch that with a ten-foot pole, but— “You're not serious.”

“In the truck,” Bucky says. “The rest of it. Set it on fire if you want. I pulled through the agonies in worse straits than this.”

“I'm having a hard time imagining worse straits than cutting off your own arm,” Steve says. He squints at the cloudy pink water and decides to let it go. For now. “Speaking of which, are you sure soaking is the best thing for a fresh amputation?”

Bucky shrugs with his face. It's a new expression; Steve doesn't remember it. Something about the foreignness of it, like a puppet under Bucky's skin, makes a cold lump in Steve's throat.

“Probably not, but you don't want to know what I smelled like before.”

Fair point. “You got a fever?”

“Always.” Bucky cuts his eyes at Steve and away, just a flicker. Steve thinks: oh. “Used to, anyway. 102.1 resting.”

“101.9,” Steve offers. He wonders what it means that he runs a little cooler than Bucky. Something to do with the arm? “Metabolism, I guess. Gotta say, though, you're not looking too good.”

“Thanks.”

“I didn't mean—”

“I know what I look like.” Bucky gives Steve a measured, level look, the first one that's lasted more than half a second. “Go on,” he says. “Ask. I know you want to.”

Steve blows a breath out of his nose. There's only two questions he's got any right to ask, and the answer to the first one— _why are you here?_ —probably isn't going to be helpful. The second might actually give him information he can actually make something out of. “Why'd you do it?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows and gestures at his stump: _what, this old thing?_

Steve nods.

“Synthesized microdoses,” Bucky says, tapping the messy sutures under the water. Steve thinks it must hurt, just touching it, but Bucky doesn't seem bothered. Feeling no pain, indeed. “Mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, regeneration boosters, anti-androgens, adrenaline...” He recites it about as flat as you can get a voice to go, and then grimaces oddly. “Went into shock when one of the dispensers ran empty a few weeks ago. Just about died. Thought I'd die for real, if it happened again, so I went after their notes. There's a manual, by the way. For me. For the arm. Did you know?”

“I found bits of one in Chicago,” Steve agrees, trying not to sound as angry as he feels.

Bucky looks wearily amused. “If a primary dispenser empties, you've got forty-eight hours to refill it, or it triggers a slow release of strychnine. Long enough to find your pet and bring it in, incidentally.”

Bucky's expression is beatific. Steve hopes it's the painkillers.

“Fuck.” It comes out through his clenched jaw. “ _God_. Just when I think—is that what happened in Philly? They tried to bring you in—is that why you killed them?”

Bucky's jaw sets, and then he looks away. When his voice comes out, it's strained and low. “Why do you think I fucking killed them?” His teeth are bared at the tile. “They shot up the _kids_. Tried to lure me down and opened fire when I didn't come quick enough, fucking shot those girls—who _does_ that, why the fuck—”

Bucky lets go of his stump and hides his face with the back of his right hand, turning half away like he's warding off a blow. Steve can see bruises on his palm, four dark crescents. Bruises from his own fingernails. Like the pain was so bad he—

Steve puts his own hand over his mouth and swallows hard. He's not sure he can speak either. He listens to Bucky breathe and pulls himself together.

When Bucky finally moves, lowering his hand to his hollow belly and tilting his head back, his face is blank.

“I'm sorry that happened,” Steve says.

Bucky laughs; it's not a happy sound. “ _You're_ sorry. Fuck your sorry. You didn't know them. You're not the one who should've kept them safe.”

Understanding dawns and Steve almost wishes it hadn't. Bucky wasn't just passing through—Bucky knew them. Must have been living with them when the agents came. Might have been living with them since—oh god, Steve realizes; Bucky's been in Philly this _whole time_. All this time. Quietly, horrified: “They were your friends.”

Bucky gives him such an arch, unimpressed look that Steve instantly feels a terrible wash of relief. It's the first sign he's seen that Bucky is—Bucky. He's still in there, somewhere. Bucky always had a magical talent for making friends wherever he went, at least until the war burned him out. Even after, sometimes, if he dug up some hidden reserve of charm. Before, he could make a friend in less than five minutes—ten, if he didn't speak their language, but he had a way with tongues too; could pick up the gist faster than anyone Steve had ever known. If Bucky's been settled down, living with normal people—it's a good sign.

“I hope you let them live long enough to regret it,” Steve says. “Those agents.”

“No.” The corner of Bucky's lip comes up, just enough to display one sharp canine. “Too fast.”

There's not much Steve can say to that, so he doesn't try. He looks away for a while, and when he looks back, Bucky is watching him from under half-lidded eyes. He finds he can't read Bucky's expression at all.

“As it happens,” Bucky says, in a worryingly thick slur, “I honestly wasn't planning to be here when you got back. But, you know what? Rogers? I cannot get out of this fucking bathtub.”

It's as much of a hint as he's ever heard. “Come on, then,” Steve says, and offers his hand at the same time Bucky reaches up. He grabs Bucky's forearm with both hands and hauls him out of the water. It dismays Steve how _light_ Bucky is, how much he has to support Bucky once he's vertical, how much stabilization he needs. Steve's not entirely sure it's just the painkillers that've ruined his sense of balance. Bucky stands like an old man with sore feet, gingerly, hunched. He's a far cry from the living weapon that made Steve genuinely fear for his life.

Steve looks down at Bucky's bare toes curling damply on the bathmat, and feels an overwhelming, animal surge of protectiveness. For weeks after Insight, Steve's regular nightmares were replaced by a looping film reel of their last fight. Bucky's empty eyes, the wet pop of bone when Steve dislocated Bucky's shoulder. His scream. It hadn't taken Steve long to realize they'd have punished him for making noise, for expressing pain; it would've taken a lot to make him cry out. There would've been more than one use for that awful mask, unnecessarily tight: the lines where it cut into Bucky's colorless skin. Bucky'd been a child of the sun, once. Olive like a sailor, glowing under Brooklyn's grime. Before Steve let him fall. Before they'd shackled him underground.

 _It's gonna be okay, Buck_ , he thinks. _It'll be okay. I'll fix this, somehow. I'll make it right._

He won't fail Bucky this time.

 

* * *

 

The first few times the Soldier tries to look at Rogers, it feels like a shock to the head, a nauseated tingling down his neck like he's been concussed. Not a reaction to real stimulus, but the anticipation of pain. It fades after he forces himself to look Rogers square in the eyes, belligerent and frightened, thinking as he does it: fuck you, Alex, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. _Wipe him and start over_. Jesus Christ. The Soldier might've succeeded in killing Rogers if they hadn't punished him for being confused. What kind of idiot designs a weapon to flinch when it sees its target?

By the time Rogers disappears to find clothes, leaving the Soldier propped against the bathroom counter, the shocky feeling's gone. He assesses himself: he's naked and queasy. He can fix one of the two, so he casts around until he sees a towel. It isn't in his reach, but he manages to tilt over and wrap it around his hips without falling on his ass, using the counter to pin it in lieu of a second hand. He refuses to look in the mirror; the expression on Rogers's face was enough. He can already feel the superpowered painkillers fading from his system, the barbed-wire sensation coming up sharp under his skin, and unless he's lost track of time entirely, the shakes are going to hit his extremities within the hour, probably around the same time his pain'll hike its pants back up and go for the kill. It's too much to hope that Rogers will let him keep taking the heroin, but maybe Rogers has something better. If he has custom-made painkillers, he must know people who can synthesize them.

The Soldier shuffles out into the hall, looking for Rogers, vaguely suspicious that he's hidden himself somewhere to call for backup and an evac team. Surely it can't take this long to find clothes.

When the Soldier turns the corner, he almost walks into the Falcon.

He has an excruciating moment of vapor lock: _whip off the towel and strangle him with it—did Rogers know he was here—how did I not hear him breathing—there's a razor on the bathroom counter—I'm not going to—there are two loaded guns in—I'm not going to_ —

The Soldier takes a step backwards and trips, his back hitting the wall with a loud thump, letting it take his weight while he pretends he's not having a heart attack, and tries to convince his hindbrain that Wilson isn't a threat. Since Wilson is wearing a pink button-up and showing his empty palms up by his ears, the latter works better than the former.

“Well,” Wilson says after a moment, lowering his hands, “This is awkward.”

“Yeah,” the Soldier croaks. He clears his throat. “I figured I'd be having this conversation with pants on.”

“You figured we'd be having this conversation at _all_?”

“You work with Rogers,” the Soldier says, and Wilson gives an illustrative shrug, as if to say, _fair enough_.

“So, why are you here?” Wilson asks. “Because, let's be real, if the answer is _murder Captain America_ , we're gonna have words.”

“If I was going to murder Captain America, I'd have left a lot less hair in the drain.”

Wilson barks a startled laugh. “Man, you are so not the guy who kicked me off an aircraft carrier. You're _funny_.”

“Sam?” Rogers says distantly. He edges into the hallway, holding a shirt. “What are you doing here?”

Wilson leans into the kitchen. His hand reappears with a case of beer dangling from it. “Thought you could use some unwinding after today. If I'd known you'd found your guy, I'd've brought more.”

“Actually, he found me,” Rogers says, and winces. “Sorry, Sam. I was going to text you.”

“No big,” says Wilson. He looks at the Soldier. “Actually, no offense, but you don't look like you should be drinking anything stronger than chamomile tea, buddy.”

“None taken,” the Soldier says, even as he's trying not to analyze _buddy_ too closely. “That's probably about all I'll be able to handle if Rogers torches my truck.”

Wilson squints at Rogers. Rogers says, blandly: “Heroin.”

Wilson says, “Oh, _hell_ naw. Okay. Officially taking charge, here, because I'm not letting either of you monkey around with that shit. Steve, get this guy some pants. Barnes, where're your keys?”

“In the,” the Soldier says, gesturing towards the bathroom, nearly sliding down the wall and losing his towel as he shifts his balance. Rogers frowns in concern and reaches out one huge arm. The Soldier reluctantly lets Rogers guide him to a bedroom, where he makes a determined and ultimately futile effort to dress himself one-handed; his fingers are already trembling. At least he manages to pull on a pair of boxers before Rogers has to help him. He's too exhausted to feel ashamed.

But: “You're shaking,” Rogers says.

“Just cold,” the Soldier lies.

Rogers offers him a sweater.

 

☙

 

The Soldier dozes in an armchair and listens to Wilson quietly cleaning and disassembling his guns. It shouldn't be soothing, but he figures that anything short of a train whistle would be soothing right about now.

“It's not that I don't trust you,” Wilson had said right off the bat, searching his bag, and the Soldier said, “No, you do what you have to do.” Rogers had just looked pained.

“Unprofessional snoopery here,” Wilson is saying now, “But, heroin? I assume you had a reason, not just, like, _hey, this looks fun_.”

“I thought it was a drug,” the Soldier says. “A pharmaceutical, I mean. Something to make me better. And then it was just for the pain.” Before Wilson can ask: “It's my bones or something, and my throat. Started hurting all the time after I left DC.”

“Scale of one to ten, ten being totally incapacitating, what's your average pain level?”

The Soldier stares at Wilson. “I—don't know?”

“If I asked you to jog around the block right now, could you?”

“N...o.” He amends: “Not comfortably.”

“Yeah, okay, pain perception's probably fucked, gotcha,” Wilson says. “I can work with a binary scale. What I'm hearing here is that you'll be needing painkillers that aren't opiate-based, pretty soon. Hey,” he adds, hefting two plastic bags of gun parts, “Where can I put these where you can't easily get at them?”

“Any place you need two hands to open,” the Soldier says. Rogers shoots Wilson a stricken look where he thinks the Soldier can't see it, but Wilson just laughs. The Soldier tries to fight a wave of dizziness, and then gives himself over to it, closing his eyes. His teeth chatter off and on until Wilson returns, pulling a squashed ottoman right up to the Soldier's armchair.

“I know, I'm the worst awful, but can I ask you to take that sweater off?” Wilson says apologetically. “Just over your shoulder is fine. I want to take a closer look at your— _yikes_. That's even worse close up.”

“Was in a hurry,” the Soldier says, and Wilson says, “Yeah, wow, those are coming out. Steve? First aid kit, please. The big one.”

Rogers scurries off. Neat trick, the Soldier thinks, and slips sideways out of the world. When things come back into focus, he lets his head flop to the left. Butterfly bandages are stuck between his messy sutures, which Wilson is carefully pulling out, muttering, “—fuck, there's still wires in here. I think he's already got some deep tissue fusing. Where's he getting the energy? I don't think he's eaten for about three days, I can practically smell his kidneys shutting down.” The Soldier can't feel a thing; Wilson must have injected his stump with something.

Somewhere above him, Rogers is saying, “Is _that_ what that is? I thought it was something in the fruit bowl going bad.”

“Nope, that's what ketosis smells like. I know, it's weird.”

“No. Well, not that weird. I remember when my ma was working the typhoid ward, she'd come home smelling like baking bread. She said it was just what they smelled like.”

“Huh. Well, that's—ugh, shit, this is bleeding. Hey, Barnes? I'm gonna need you to stay awake. Steve, can you run down to the bodega and get some chicken broth, the stuff in the cartons? High fat, high sodium, the cheap stuff. Ramen packs if they haven't got that. I want something in him that's not water. You with me, Barnes?”

“Yeah,” the Soldier mumbles.

“What's my name?”

“Wilson.” The Soldier blinks his way up, digging a nail into the cuticle of his thumb. “Sam. I'm awake.”

“Yeah, don't do that,” Wilson says, smacking his fingers apart gently. “Just talk to me. Read any good books lately?”

The Soldier's shaking so hard his laugh comes out stuttered. “You—you chatting me up?”

“Hey, man, whatever it takes.”

“Yeah. When I was sick. There was a bin—” He bites down on a shudder that threatens to knock Wilson off the ottoman. “—n-near the squat. Some of the girls went on a—a mission of mercy. Brought back a bunch of weird shit. UFO conspiracy theories, autobiography of Mussolini, something in Hebrew, history of codebreaking—” The next shudder comes with a terrible cramp down the muscles of his abdomen. “— _fuck_. Sorry, this—isn't making your job any easier.”

“It's cool,” Wilson says. “You're doing fine. So, which was the good one? I got money on UFOs, that sounds like a laugh and a half.”

“It was awful,” the Soldier says. “No. Codebreaking. About a million pages, it was—it was so heavy I had to prop it up on a pillow.”

“We'll get you an e-reader. Stick a few thousand books on it, light as a feather.”

That makes him swim up out of the fog a little. “A few _thousand_?” he says, as Rogers slams his way back into the apartment with all the grace of a rhino.

“Uh huh.” Wilson clips a suture; the Soldier realizes it's a fresh one. He feels like he's been keeping up his end of the conversation, but time isn't running like it should. It moves in jumps and flashes. “Captain Technophobe here won't buy one, so I guess I'll have to work on you.”

“I'm not getting a Kindle,” Rogers says over his shoulder, on his way to the kitchen.

“I love how you knew what I was talking about.”

“I don't have to know. You're as bad as Tony about those things.”

“What can I say, man, I like my books.”

“Look—”

“Oh, here we go.”

“—until they manufacture an e-reader that _smells like a book_ ,” Rogers says, putting something in the microwave, “I'm not biting.”

“I'll be sure to inform Amazon,” says Wilson.

“I'm just saying, if they can make candles that smell like mangoes, they can make a tablet that smells like old glue.”

The Soldier is looking back and forth between them, amused, when another full-body shudder ends in a cramp that doubles him over and yanks his stump right out of Wilson's hands. Every muscle below his chest knots up hard. If his teeth weren't clenched against the pain, the sound that comes out of him might have been a scream. Cold sweat breaks out on his spine, his neck, his upper lip, making the rest of his skin feel weirdly hot and tight. He can barely hear Rogers's frightened “Buck?” and Wilson's steady: “Hey, breathe.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” the Soldier hisses when it's over. He uncurls jerkily, half scared something in him is going to shatter if he moves too fast, and flaps his stump at Wilson. “You better—you'd better get on with it, before I fucking—pass out on you.”

Wilson salutes sloppily with his needle holder. Rogers comes over with a steaming mug of something that makes the Soldier feel ravenous and nauseated at the same time. Thankfully, after a hesitant sip, the balance tips over to hunger. It's hard not to gulp it down; easier, when he reminds himself how much it'll hurt coming back up. He manages half the mug before his hand starts shaking too badly to hold it. Rogers takes it from him and puts it on a little end-table, within arm's reach, but seriously overestimating the Soldier's dexterity levels. He's positive he'll knock it to the floor if he gets his hand within eight inches of it.

“I hope you're not gonna fight me on bandaging this up.” Wilson rips open a roll of gauze to emphasize the point. “I know, I know, supersoldier, whatever, but I get the crawling horrors just thinking about fibers getting stuck in here, so humor me, okay?”

“S'fine,” the Soldier manages. He clenches his hand and lets his head fall back against the chair. He's too hot, he thinks, and then: he's too cold. The room swims, so he closes his eyes. That's worse: his body jerks over and over, the half-dreaming sensation like he's falling, a buzzing in his head.

“Stay with me,” Wilson says warningly. “Hey, you're a rockstar. If you can cut your own arm off, you can keep your eyes open.”

“Twice.” That seems important, somehow. “Twice, I cut it off—the first time.” He blinks and blinks, shaking his head. “Guess that's a sign. Not meant to have two arms.”

For a moment, there's only the sound of Wilson wrapping gauze around his stump, and then Rogers says, very small, “You had to—before?”

"Sure."

“God,” Rogers whispers. He touches the back of the Soldier's hand, tentative, and then clutches it backwards like he hasn't learned how to shake properly. The Soldier doesn't cling back; doesn't have the strength, even if he wanted to. Rogers eventually lets go. “I'm so sorry. If I'd gone looking—”

“You might still have had to cut it off,” Wilson says, “And then you might not've gone on to save the world, so ixnay on the guilt, okay? Neither of you needs that shit.”

“I'm,” the Soldier says. He stops, frowning. He can't remember what he was going to say. “I'm—” he tries again, but a wall of exhaustion rolls up to meet him. When the muscle cramps hit this time, it feels as though they're happening to someone else, far away, outside of his body. He hears himself make a strange high noise, knows he's shaking; he can see his outstretched fingers trembling like leaves. It doesn't seem real.

“Barnes,” someone says. “You okay? Hey, tough stuff, you hear me in there? C'mon, talk to me. Sarge? Shit, he's non-responsive, Steve—”

Over Wilson's shoulder, through one of the narrow windows, snow is beginning to fall.

 

☙

 

Warm.

Warm light from a lamp. Warmth on his legs, his chest. Too warm; he's burning up. He chokes without making a sound. Acid on his tongue. Fire in his throat.

“We _can't_.”

“Yeah, I agree, no hospitals, but—look, he's gonna die if we don't get a doctor in here. I'm just a medic, I can't treat...this.”

“Buck's a fighter, though, and I think I could've healed from those bullet wounds without treatment, so maybe—”

“First: no, you lunatic, you were this close to singing the choir invisible. Secondly: heroin withdrawal alone can kill people, even without whatever else he's withdrawing from now the arm's gone, plus a gigantic open wound full of who-knows-what from that sawblade, and his feet are cut to shit, I think this was _frostbite_ before it sort of healed—not to mention the malnutrition. Steve, man, I respect the hell outta you, but I'm not giving you the option here. If we don't get a doctor, he's gonna die.”

 _Nice sentiment_ , the Soldier thinks distantly, _But have you considered letting me?_

 

☙

 

Shouting.

“It's not as scary as it sounds. Steve, listen—it was politics, not malpractice. She let her license lapse after the suspension. That's all. And she's ex-DWB, so she's seen worse shit than this, and she's discreet.”

“Oh.”

“It's either her or a hospital, man.”

“God. Can't be any worse than the cut-rate doctors Ma managed to find for me. Okay—”

 

☙

 

It's warm on the roof. Summer sun beating down on skin and tar-paper, distant buildings shimmering in the heat, the coal-smoke, and never has the sky been so cut-glass blue. Sweat on the small of his back, his fingers. His upper lip, as he drops the cigarette on his chest. _Fuck!_

Laughter. Grit under his elbows and his palms.

It's warm.

 

☙

 

“What did he say they were giving him?”

Paper shuffling.

“It's here, in the manual—here. We don't know how many as of this morning, but potentially all of those.”

“Right, methadone in combination with either of these two is going to put him straight into cardiac arrest, so that's out. Congratulations, boys, you get to do this the hard way. Captain, come with me, I'm going to teach you how to rush-order from an offshore pharmacy without getting arrested.”

“Hey, I think his eyes are open. Barnes? Can you hear me?”

The dark rushes up to meet him.

 

☙

 

A hand on his face. Something tickling his nose; gone. Stroking through his hair. It feels good, and then: it's too much. Burning. He can't move. He can't speak.

“I hate this. I hate this so much, Sam.”

“I'm gonna put this in perspective for you, because there's no way this doesn't suck, but there's ways it could suck _worse_ , so shut up for a sec. One, he came here of his own volition. Two, he trusts you and me enough to be around him when he's incapacitated, which—okay, I'm not positive if that's a good sign or because he's used to total submission around authority figures, but he's doing pretty good at the rest of it, so I'm gonna choose optimism. Three, he expressed pain and discomfort instead of doing the stoic thing, so. Those are things _people_ do, Steve. He was living with people, doing people things. It could be worse. It could be a whole lot worse.”

“I know, I know, I just—”

“I know, man.”

 

☙

 

It's warm on the—

 

☙

 

He wakes up choking.

He can't breathe. Acid eating at his skin, running into his joints. Poison, it must be poison, cyanide gas down his throat, in his nose, burning—

“Hey, hey, you're going to pull your IV out. You're okay, Buck. Breathe.”

He _can't_.

He tries to swallow, clear his throat, comes up against— _no_. No, no, no, not the tube, oh fuck, not the tube. He can feel it now on the side of his face, where the tape pulls. He swallows open-mouthed, convulsively, trying not to gag. Gains a trickle of air. Another. Someone's hand on his hand, his shoulder. Agony, wherever something touches his skin, steel wool all around him. Steel wool in his throat. He strikes out, wheezing. Smacks clumsily at his own face, grabs the tube. Yanks it.

Someone grabs his wrist and he punches with everything he has.

Crashing, shouting.

Sharp pain in his neck.

“This isn't working,” a woman says.

 

☙

 

Voices underwater.

Light, then: dark.

 

☙

 

The Soldier wakes to the low, familiar hum of a feeding pump.

He's sedated to hell, all the ambient light in the room too-bright and wobbly, so he doesn't quite make it all the way to panic, but he's frantic in the way he swats at his nose with a hand that feels twice as big as it should. He feels around both nostrils three times before he can convince himself there isn't a cleverly concealed tube. The hum continues unabated, like it's mocking him. They always strapped him down for this, before, and being able to move is disorienting him on top of whatever drugs are coming through the IV in his hand.

When he cranes his neck less carefully than he should and squints above him, trying to figure out where it's coming from, he sees Rogers watching him from the doorway. Rogers looks startled and guilty when the Soldier catches him staring, and then he smiles.

“Hey,” Rogers says quietly, coming in and sitting on the edge of the bed. “How're you feeling?”

The Soldier doesn't want to dignify that with a response, so he looks around instead, breathing carefully. He thinks he's in the spare bedroom near the kitchen, the one that he figured would get light in the evening and probably needed a lamp the rest of the day. It's light enough to read by, the walls all stained orange, so it must be close to sunset. If so, that would mean only a few hours have passed. Unless—

He tries to ask the time but clearing his throat twice amounts to nothing. His throat is on fire and his mouth is ash-dry. Rogers reaches for something beside the bed. Rustling. His hand reappears holding a large swab. “Is it okay if I...? This'll help.”

The swab smells of lemons, but he can't taste anything when Rogers moves it gently around his teeth and gums, moistening tissues. He stares at the ceiling and doesn't move until it's over. There's a little blood on the swab when it's done, the inside of his right cheek stinging; he must have bitten it. The Soldier tries again and manages a thready: “Time?”

Rogers pulls a cell phone out of his pocket. “18:03. So, uh, seventy-one hours since you stopped responding. Dr. Sousa had to operate on you and put in a g-tube two days ago—you pulled out the nose one twice. Is there anything I can do? Anything you need?”

The Soldier doesn't say _a bullet to the brain stem_ , but only because it's too hard to talk.

“Sleep,” he says instead, and closes his eyes. Rogers's weight comes up off the bed. He checks something on the Soldier's wrist—tape, by the feel—and doesn't walk away immediately. The Soldier flinches when a finger touches his forehead, moving some of his hair. Intended to be a comforting touch, clearly, but it hurts; his skin feels taut and warm, ready to burst open. Something cracking up through it, magma under the surface. He breathes out painfully once Rogers and his cloud of concern leave the room.

The place where the cannula goes into the back of his hand feels oddly fragile. He's careful with it as he feels beneath the blankets. His skin has the clammy, gritty feel of a long convalescence; it makes him tired, how he knows his body better in distress than out of it. Sweat residue, lint—toxins, maybe, coming out through his pores. His fingers stop over his stomach, startled by slender tubing where he doesn't expect it. He follows it to a small plastic...thing, embedded in the skin below his ribcage. G-tube, Rogers said. Of course: not an NG tube. Skipping the nose entirely, jammed right into his stomach. God. How close did he come to shutting down for good? He yanks his hand away from his skin and lays it on top of the blankets. He can still feel the fingers of his missing hand, trying to follow suit, twitching invisibly and _hurting_ , which seems vastly unfair.

Somewhere in the apartment, he can hear Rogers speaking, a low murmur punctuated by long pauses. On the phone to someone, probably Wilson. He concentrates on that tiny human presence; imagines Rogers sitting on one of the barstools in the kitchen, phone to his ear, eyes downcast, drawing idle circles on the table with his fingers. Imagines Wilson's steady voice on the other end of the line. He hears Rogers loudly protest something, suddenly, and the apartment is still too quiet, too clean—but it's enough.

He sleeps.

 

☙

 

When Dr. Sousa comes to check on the Soldier in the morning, he's been awake and shaking for two hours, minus the brief interlude where he allowed Rogers to swab his mouth and then gritted his teeth until Rogers stopped hovering. Half the shaking is withdrawal, probably, but the rest is from the pain, shooting down his muscles and setting up trenches in his bones, and proving a private little theory that there aren't any analgesics in his IV bag, just whatever Sousa brings when she visits. He wishes without energy that he'd driven the truck into the ocean when he'd had the chance, and then he's fiercely glad he didn't. He can't make up his mind whether he wants to fight for his life or his death.

Sousa is short, severe, white-haired, and wearing a beat-up aviator's jacket, the combination of which makes her look like an ex-military grandmother. Muscle memory and panic make him lash out at her the first time she gets within arm's reach—something about the alcohol-and-latex smell of her—but she catches his agonized kitten-weak flail and uses it as an opportunity to examine his wrist. She inspects all the tubing coming out of his body, checks the three bags hanging from the IV pole, and pries his eyes open with cold fingers. He tries to answer her questions with the least amount of syllables possible. Pain? _Yes_. Where? _Everywhere_. Shortness of breath? _Yes_. Cold sweats, fever, nausea? _Yes_. Irritability? (He just stares at her.)

“So, this all sucks,” Sousa says. “And, hey, guess what? It's going to keep sucking. Don't die. I'll be back in twelve hours.”

She injects something into his cannula, hooks his IV back up, and leaves the room. Down the hall, he can hear her growling something at Rogers, and his polite mumbled responses. It irks him, in a futile way, that Sousa'd rather tell Rogers what to do than give the Soldier any information. How long is he going to be in this bed, stuck full of tubes and crawling out of his own skin? He wants heroin like he wants to breathe; god, he can almost _smell_ it in the room, is half-convinced there's a dose wrapped up in the night-table drawer, but the way his bones turn to glass when he tries to sit up removes checking it from his itinerary. He stares mournfully at the drawer, almost within arm's reach, across an impossible chasm.

The pain fuzzes out soft a few minutes later, and he finds he can't bring himself to care.

Wilson shows up for dinner after Sousa's evening visit, his greeting to Rogers yanking the Soldier out of an uncomfortable, guarded doze. He can hear the sounds of them scuffling around in the kitchen, low tones and teasing, the occasional thump like someone's been elbowed into a counter. Bright human noises. Their relaxed voices, and the warm, neutral smell of cooking rice, carry him into real sleep. He doesn't stir until Sousa arrives in the morning.

It occurs to him, a day later—two? time smears out, numbers slipping from his grasp—that she must be giving him something to prevent him from throwing up. He _should_ be vomiting, he thinks, by all rights, between the withdrawal and the thing in his abdominal wall and liquid the color of expired milk dripping into his stomach around the clock. He still spends all his waking hours shivering; he can tell when the painkillers wear off, because it's the ache under his skin that hits him first, endless hours of tension and trembling taking their toll on his muscle fibers. The closest he comes to being sick is the day he tries to get out of bed too soon: wave upon wave of vertigo sending the room spinning, and the sudden awareness of every single foreign object under his skin. Rogers finds him curled on top of the covers later, half out of his mind and freezing. He passes out from the pain of being moved.

 

☙

 

As if he'd finally conveyed it to her telepathically, Sousa spends a terse fifteen minutes showing the Soldier how the feeding system works: which bag dispenses fluid and which bag vents air, and how not to fuck them up, and how to flush the tube going into his body so it doesn't get clogged or contaminated. She sets off every alarm on the machine once, so he knows what they sound like, which would be solicitous if she wasn't also withholding his painkillers until she'd finished her lecture and confirmed that, yes, he does really understand when to clamp and unclamp any given tube. After frowning at the port in his abdomen like he's personally disappointed her, she flashes a cream used to prevent tissue granulation, “which you probably won't need because you're a freak of nature, but you're going to humor me because I hold the syringe in this relationship, yeah?”

“Ma'am,” he says, which isn't really an answer, but seems to mollify her anyway.

“Don't die,” she says, and he manages a floppy salute.

 

☙

 

Just one little hit, just a drop, he'll do anything, he'll kill for it, he'll get down on his goddamn broken _knees_ —

 

☙

 

Several days later, while injecting his morning painkillers into his port, Sousa spends a full minute glaring at the Soldier's bare stump and moving it around. She balls up the old bandages and throws them in the garbage, but she doesn't put fresh gauze on. Without fanfare, she clips his stitches, removes his catheters, and slides the cannula out of his hand. The whole process startles him with its rapidity, and startles him again when he notices he's not swimming through a warm haze; whatever drug she's given him, it's not the one that puts him to sleep. His aches are distant, almost abstracted, but he can feel them. He looks at Sousa with something that wants to be hope and feels like fear.

“Sit up,” she says. “I'm reinstating your vertical privileges.”

The Soldier clamps down on a grin. Goodbye, hateful sickbed—hello, autonomy. He'd kill for a shower. He'd kill for the _hose_.

Sousa looks grimly prepared to yank him upright if he can't make it, but he manages to sit up under his own power, one-handed. She gives him a small glass of water and watches him try to hold onto it carefully, without breaking it or dropping it. On her instruction, he takes a few measured swallows. It hurts more than he expects; he almost chokes. Sousa glowers at the watch on her wrist until two minutes have passed. When the muscles of her face relax, he realizes she was waiting to see if he'd throw up the liquid.

Unexpectedly, she moves scorpion-quick and grabs his chin.

“Listening?” she says. He nods. “If you kick the bucket after making me drive through Dupont twice a day for two weeks, I will leave a flaming bag of fecal matter on your grave, so pay attention. Right? Drink when you're thirsty. _Slowly_. You can take baths, but no immersing the port until next Friday, and cover it if you take a shower. Don't raise your heart rate significantly for at least three weeks. No exercise for two months. If the painkillers aren't enough, try meditating. No hard drugs. No alcohol. I'll be back in March to check your tube. And—” Sousa leans off the side of the bed with a grunt. “You'll probably need this for a while. Enjoy.”

She lays a metal cane across his knees, and then she leaves.

The Soldier stares at it and feels—absolutely blank.

He should feel resignation, maybe. Anger. Once upon a time, he was the greatest operative in the world, the terror of the Eastern Seaboard, a beast with the strength of ten. He could run fifty miles uncomplaining—untired. Days without sustenance, metal under his skin, burns on his hands, and still moving forward. Invincible. Bulletproof. The man who couldn't die.

He looks at the cane and feels nothing at all.

 

☙

 

By the time Rogers arrives with an armful of clothes, the Soldier has managed to hobble unsteadily into the bathroom down the hall, leaning on his feeding pole the whole way. To his shock and disappointment, his initial resolve to rely on his own balance as much as possible resulted in a spectacular wipe-out. He nearly broke his face on the night-table. Picking himself up off the floor was neither easy nor dignified, and he's perversely glad that Rogers wasn't around to see it—or, thankfully, to hear him whimpering like a goddamned dog.

But really, a broken nose wouldn't make what he's looking at in the mirror any worse.

It's the first time he's properly seen his own face since—god, since Murray died. He can see the outline of every bone under his skin, clear enough that he could probably sell himself as an anatomical model, one of those articulated skeletons he's seen through school windows. The hollows at his throat and collarbones are purple and green, as though the blood's pooled into them and stagnated. They're the brightest points on his body, because the rest of him is waxy fish-belly gray. He didn't think a living person's skin could do that. His cheeks and eye sockets are sunken and darker than the rest, like he's gone a few rounds and lost about as bad as you can lose, the bruising under them more colorful than the ambiguous gray of his eyes. The tendons in his neck stand out like wires. His stump is a curdy mangle of tissue that more closely resembles abdominal fat than skin.

He doesn't recognize himself.

Rogers edges tentatively into the doorway, looking at the side of the Soldier's face instead of what's in the mirror. The Soldier doesn't blame him.

“I look,” the Soldier says, “Like _shit_.”

“Helluva lot better than you did on Monday,” Rogers offers, which isn't helpful, exactly, so much as it's a moment of perspective. Oh, good—he only looks three-quarters dead. Monday, though; Monday he must have been seven-eighths. What an improvement.

“I brought you your clothes.” Rogers puts the pile on the counter next to the sink; the Soldier recognizes the sweatpants he stole from one of the STRIKE rogues and the shirt Rogers gave him the day he broke in. Rogers pauses. “Do you need a hand?”

 _Why, you got one lying around?_ the Soldier thinks blearily. He shakes his head too hard, almost overbalancing. Vertigo makes him tighten his grip on the counter-top. “I'll be fine,” he says, hoping it's true.

He shuts the door so Rogers can't watch the ensuing mess. It takes easing himself to the floor and taking breaks between articles of clothing, which is a slow enough process to begin with, but not as slow as levering himself back up with the pole, what's left of his other arm braced against the back of the door. The tube makes his shirt ride up a little at the hem, but his stomach's so hollow he can't see the port underneath; his ribs jut out over it. He deliberately doesn't look in the mirror when he's through. He doesn't need to know what his skeleton looks like with clothes on. He leans against the door and checks his pockets, half hopeful and half apprehensive, for heroin. All he finds is a ball of lint and the bullet casing from Maine. He looks at it for a while, and then he puts it back in his pocket.

When the Soldier steps out of the bathroom, it's with the honest intention to make his way to the living room, maybe see if the snow is still coming down through those tall windows, see if he can't stay awake for longer than an hour—but he looks down the length of the hall and thinks: _you know what, I'll pass_. It's a distance he could have paced in less than three seconds, once, loping effortless strides, but now his palm sweats where he grips the feeding pole, and his heart kicks up an anticipatory drumbeat. Just making it back to the bedroom feels like sizing up a mountain face.

There's an armchair under the window, but the bed is so much closer.

The Soldier wakes up some indeterminate time later, groggy and disoriented, to Rogers sitting on the edge of the bed with his fingers resting on the Soldier's collarbone. Whatever painkillers Sousa gave him, they've long since worn off, but the ache in his bones is a normal ache; it doesn't tear him to pieces when he shifts on top of the covers. The Soldier looks up blearily at Rogers and wonders, first, why Rogers is touching him, and more importantly, why he didn't wake up instantly when Rogers entered the room.

 _I knew him_ , he thinks, unwanted, and bites down on a shudder. After the profound betrayals his body has already subjected him to, this latest loss of control feels like a blow. He never asked for this, this knowing without insight, a kernel he can't analyze, like some inscrutable disease lurking in his bones. Never asked to be punished for it. He's beginning to suspect that HYDRA put it in him to fuck with him. It seems like something they'd do. Upload a virus into his system, keep him unbalanced. Or, worse, to prepare him for something more subtle, in case Insight failed; their very own mole, tailor-made. Just the thought of that: false memories, clinging deep inside him like a parasite, almost makes him gag. Before he can shake it off, the hand on his shoulder disappears.

“Sorry, pal,” Rogers says. He holds up a syringe and the Soldier's mouth goes dry before he sees, stupidly, that it's the large one without a needle, the kind that fits into the port in his belly. “Hate to wake you up, but I gotta give you your antibiotics. Does anything hurt?”

The Soldier swallows an uncharitable response. “Let me sit up.”

It's not pretty, but he gets himself backed upright against the pillows without any help from Rogers. He has a moment of adrenaline he doesn't need when he groggily goes to steady himself with the wrong arm, and comes up short on his stump, almost falling over. He can still feel the missing parts twitching and tingling, clenching muscles that don't exist. It hurts like the aftermath of a slap, which isn't helped by his putting weight on the real end of his arm. Rogers doesn't laugh, but he does offer a stabilizing hand that the Soldier doesn't take, and smiles encouragingly.

“I guess that'll be tough to get used to,” Rogers says. “If you want a new prosthetic, I've got a friend who—”

“ _No_.” Too fast and too loud. He shuts his eyes briefly. “No,” he says, more neutral, pulling his shoulders back. “Thank you.”

“Okay,” Rogers says. He pauses the machine and switches out the long tube for the syringe. “So, Doc Sousa—I told her what you said, and Sam showed her your file, and she said she couldn't be sure without a bone density test and a bunch of other things, but she thinks the reason you've got bone pain is because of the cryo cycles. All the freezing and thawing was really hard on them. And your esophagus is—the phrase she used was _ground beef_.”

He'd suspected as much.

Neither of them say anything until Rogers hooks the main tube back up. The Soldier doesn't realize how quiet the room really is until the machine begins to hum again.

“But she said it might improve,” Rogers adds. “Nutrition, rest—calcium supplements, I think she said. Sam's going over her notes. You've got a healing factor too, right? Like me?”

Is _that_ what Rogers calls it? The Soldier shrugs.

“So it'll get better.”

 _I wish I had that kind of confidence_ , the Soldier thinks tiredly. As much as he tries to hide the resignation, something must show on his face, because Rogers looks very sad all of a sudden. He moves as though he's about to touch the back of the Soldier's hand, and then changes his mind, curling his fingers on his thigh.

“I'm sorry you have to go through this, Buck,” Rogers says. “I wish there was anything I could do to help.” The Soldier gestures at the medical equipment around them, but Rogers's mouth slants ruefully. “Really help. I mean, help you get your life back. You had a whole life, and—” Rogers clenches his fists; releases them. “I want to help you remember. Do you—”

The Soldier takes pity on Rogers and shakes his head. “I don't remember anything before the ravine.”

There's a flare of disappointment, plain as day on that expressive face, before Rogers can school himself into neutrality. “That's okay,” Rogers says firmly. “Just—so you know, that's all. You took care of me, and now it's my turn.”

When Rogers says it, a little of the tiredness and disappointment that he seems to wear as a cloak falls away, and the Soldier sees a glimpse of the man he fought on the helicarrier: a soldier, a weapon, a force to be reckoned with. At least until he dropped his shield. Rogers wasn't the first to give up; some of the Soldier's targets stopped fighting too, like animals laying down when they know their death is coming. He remembers feeling, at the time, as though there was a certain peace in that, a moment of grace. He doesn't remember any of that with Rogers. Just—terror. His own terror, so strong he could smell it coming out of his skin. It felt like breaking his own bones, after, searching blind to find the man he was supposed to kill, touching his slack limbs underwater.

If this is the thanks he gets for hauling Rogers out of the river—well, he'll take it. A life for a life. Right?

Rogers deflates a little, after a moment, and looks at his hands. “I thought you might like to know—okay, maybe you don't, but you have a _right_ to know. Pierce is dead. He died while we were fighting.” Rogers looks up. “He was—” The Soldier watches him swallow _your owner_ , _your master_ , _your operator_. “He used you,” Rogers finishes lamely.

Pierce's name no longer makes the Soldier want to vomit, but a thick twist of something like nausea hits him under the ribs all the same. He's not sure if he wants to jump for joy or crawl under the bed and never come out. He says, “How?” As if it matters—as if it changes anything.

“Two bullets to the chest. Clean,” Rogers says. Like he can read the Soldier's mind, he scowls. “He deserved something slower.”

The Soldier agrees, silently, but some part of him thinks: nothing could ever have been slow enough. Not for Pierce, not for Zola. Maybe not even for Townsend or Murray; for all the Soldier keeps thinking of them as the exceptions because they didn't treat him like a slab of meat or dirt under their shoes, they were still suiting him up and pointing him towards people they wanted dead. Their perfect wind-up soldier. No wonder they rewarded him—you only had to see how much better he performed with a pat on the head. The carrot proved more powerful than the stick.

Why had he been so fucking blind?

“Bucky?” Rogers asks, and the Soldier realizes he's grimacing, his whole face taut with anger. His jaw hurts. “Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. Try to get some rest. Holler if you need anything, okay?” and Rogers pats the blankets next to the Soldier's thigh. He gets up and shuts the gray curtains, dimming the light significantly. Black-out panels. It feels safe, almost cave-like, until Rogers shuts the door on his way out, and then the Soldier is alone with his thoughts in an empty, echoing room.

 _Healing factor_ , Rogers said: _right? like me?_ But the Soldier doesn't—isn't. He doesn't want to think about how he might not get much better than this, not after what he read in Zola's notes. The answers he's been looking for since nineteen-fifty-whatever, just an appendix at the end of the manual, finally decoded in their entirety. He can't decide if that would have pleased Zola or horrified him, how they pored over every word and then shoved it in the back where no one would read it. Zola had mentioned Rogers in passing: the only successful product of somebody else's serum, a superhuman creature with enhanced strength, senses, and speed. An individual success but a collective failure, because there was supposed to be dozens of him. Hundreds. An army of mutants to win a war. Zola's superiors had wanted the same, but Zola hadn't—Zola'd wanted to cheat death. Zola'd wanted immortality.

So he made a man who couldn't die.

And Zola'd obviously been successful, at least at first. The Soldier had wondered, had _asked_ if Zola was testing whether the serum lost effectiveness over time. He'd been half right. It was getting weaker, but not over time. He's an idiot—he should have asked _himself_ why Zola'd stopped flaying him open, why he'd downgraded to smaller and smaller experiments, why he'd fought the missions, instead of assuming it was just Zola getting old, being roadblocked by HQ. Whatever Zola put in the Soldier's cells, the thing that closed his wounds and produced blood faster than he could lose it, it was diminishing, and Zola was watching it happen. Cryo was draining it like a leaky basin. That's why Zola had fought so hard against the Soldier's use in the field, why he'd driven off so many officers—not jealousy over the allocation of an interesting resource, but fear that he'd lose his miracle. It'd be almost touching, if Zola hadn't been the Soldier's living nightmare.

No better than any of the cell leaders, though, who'd looked at the full parcel and decided to keep pushing the Soldier until he broke. All of them, ordering up anesthetics, hiding the damage as it grew under his skin, praying they'd get their full use out of him before he stopped functioning for good. No wonder Pierce had praised him so much, murmured sweet nothings the Soldier wouldn't understand—he'd made it to the end of the line, hadn't he: kept running, kept perfect time, their unflagging clockwork toy, too dumb to notice the rust on his gears. No wonder he hurts so much. Who cares about a few frayed nerves? His cut-rate serum's not strong enough for this. It's just trying to keep him alive.

How long is he going to live for, he wonders? How much of his body is going to fail with every passing year? How slow will it be, his decay? Will his brain be the last thing to go?

He stops thinking about that.

The Soldier tries his best to sleep, but all he can see in the grave-quiet dark is the holes in Tank's belly.

Should have known better. They'd come for him—of course they would. How long did he think he could hide with his head in the sand? How long could he have shut off his brain, pretending not to know they'd have tagged him like an animal—trackers in the arm, probably under his skin, still. _Un refugio, el asilo_ ; and he turned it into a nightmare. He can't go back to Philadelphia, he realizes. It's like a plank to the stomach. He can't. Not once, not for any reason, not even after—if ever—he's safe. Here, at least Rogers isn't vulnerable, not like them. And, judging by the quality of security cameras the Soldier had noted on the building and in the halls, he doubts the adjoining apartments are entirely civilian-owned. Agents, probably, just as capable of defending themselves as Rogers. There won't be any more deaths for his sake. No more blood on his hands.

Retirement, he tells himself, but it feels an awful lot like surrender.

 

☙

 

The next few days are wretched.

Not physically. They might be, if the Soldier had the wherewithal to drag himself out of bed for more than the very essentials, or if he did more than sit up when Rogers brought him his medications, but he doesn't, so he'll never know. He never thought he'd be grateful for a tube in his stomach, but it means he doesn't have to crawl to the kitchen and make food under Rogers's watchful eye, let alone choke it down. Rather, it's not that he doesn't have to; if it were any other way, he'd starve. He just doesn't have the strength.

It's only that in the absence of distractions, busywork, and heroin—and his refusal to assess his body's damage—the Soldier has no choice but to think about what's actually been _taken_ from him.

What he's taken from others.

It's not another life that he's mourning, exactly. It's too alien to imagine another him, a person who didn't become what he did, who grew up and settled down and thought of quieter things than killing. But it hits him like a stun-stick, over and over, that he's done terrible things for terrible people, has had his unique talents used for evil—hell, that he might not have any unique talents at all, that they might have created those things in him somehow, built him and warped him and preened when he believed the things they put in his head. In the end, he's no better than the men who shot up La Cueva, because he's killed kids too. _Why_ did he kill kids? How'd they make him do it—how'd they justify it to him? Why did he believe them?

He's not special; he's something out of a test tube. He's a monster.

Between the pain and the exhaustion and the dark thoughts rattling around his head, it's a bone-deep black-hole _dog-misery_ he falls into, and it burns him down to nothing.

 

☙

 

Rogers doesn't seem to sleep very well. Whenever the Soldier wakes up on the wrong side of dawn, staring at the walls, Rogers always seems to be moving around. He passes the Soldier's door on occasion, barefooted but not entirely silent, sometimes whispering to himself. The Soldier hears Rogers scream in his sleep, one night, a small, agonized noise like a child might make, and he thinks grudgingly: yeah, me too.

Nocturnal wanderings aside, Rogers is either an exceptionally quiet person at baseline, or he's making himself quiet for his sole occupant's benefit, so it's a shock when the Soldier hears someone come in stamping and swearing and rattling bags. He goes from dozing to gasping wakefulness in a matter of seconds. It's not fear, but it feels similar, his broken systems crossing the wires between alertness and anxiety. The feeding pump hums; the radiator thumps. His frantic heartbeat slows.

“Rogers!” Wilson calls. “Bring a towel, I'm getting snow all over your stupid rug.”

“You gave me that rug,” Rogers says from down the hall, and there's the distinctive sound of a towel hitting something: _whap!_ Muffled cursing.

The Soldier manages to sit up halfway, propped against the pillow awkwardly, by the time Wilson comes down the hall and knocks on the door frame.

“Hey, man,” Wilson says. “How's it hanging?”

The Soldier grimaces a little. Wilson grimaces back, commiserative. He casts around, and decides to flop in the armchair, stretching out his legs. The toes of his socks are wet. “Steve thought you'd bounce back quicker, but I said, Rogers, _you'd_ still be laid up if this was you, have a little chill.” Wilson unzips his hoodie most of the way. Rogers keeps the apartment very warm. “You getting back any energy?”

The correct answer is _yes_ ; the truth is _no_. “Some,” he hedges.

“Cravings?”

“Better.” A little. Maybe. An improvement has occurred. He supposes the impossibility of it helps: he can barely get out of bed, let alone out of the house, and god knows how he'd find the energy or the resources to go further than that.

“And how're the painkillers working out?”

“Better than nothing,” the Soldier says. “Not as good as the heroin, but...” He shrugs. “I was expecting that.”

Wilson crosses his arms. “Steve says you haven't been down the hall yet. Is it the pain?”

The Soldier considers lying through his teeth, but the end result of lying about this is only going to get him more painkillers, or different painkillers, and the dose he's already taking makes him feel slower and foggier than he'd like. But if he doesn't lie, what does he say? There's no easy way to explain that it's fear and guilt, not pain, that's eating him alive. Language fails him. He doesn't know how to begin. The Soldier looks at his hand and bites the inside of his cheek, hard.

Wilson, to the Soldier's immense relief, lets him off the hook.

“So, Sousa—I know, right?” Wilson says, when the Soldier makes a face. “Total raving genius, honest to god, but her bedside manner is for shit. Anyway, between the two of us and your medical file—sorry, by the way, you were kind of dying at the time, but still, sorry—we think you've got some _hellacious_ osteoarthritis from cryofreeze and the crazy dosage of Depo they were giving you, and it hasn't had a chance to get better because you've been starving for the last however-long, so you're hurting all the damn time. Your body's trying to repair a thing, but it doesn't have the energy to repair the thing, so it's just—” Wilson makes a tapping motion. “Chipping away at it and not getting anywhere. Also, Sousa had a good look while she was running the endoscope, and she thinks you burned your throat some time in the last couple of years, based on the scarring. Maybe fire damage. That sound about right?”

“I don't really remember,” the Soldier says, figuring Wilson will hear: _but that doesn't mean it didn't happen_. Stumbling over a flash, glass tapping his teeth, a hand clamping his nose: “I think someone made me drink—acid, or something. So they could control what I ate.”

Wilson winces. “She didn't think you'd be capable of swallowing solid foods. Were you? In Philly?”

“Purées. Cold stuff. Mashed-up rice.” At Wilson's raised eyebrows: “Yeah, it hurt. I threw up a lot.”

Wilson nods at the feeding machine on the pole. “So your new friend's an improvement, then.”

The Soldier shrugs. “Hurts less. Harder to get around.”

“Oh, don't worry, that thing is sad and outdated, I'm gonna get Rogers to order you a Joey.” A pause. “You know? Because it can fit in a pouch?”

When the Soldier makes a clueless gesture, Wilson says, “Oh my god, you poor sucker,” and climbs onto the bed next to him, pulling out his phone as he settles, apparently unconcerned about his proximity to a weapon that almost killed him. The Soldier stares warily as Wilson types something into a search bar and then tilts the screen.

Okay, baby kangaroos are—pretty goddamned cute.

Wilson begins what he calls a “YouTube spiral,” which apparently involves a lot of videos of dumb baby animals falling all over themselves and getting into places they shouldn't. In the middle of a video of golden retriever puppies trying to climb stairs for the first time, the Soldier catches himself smiling. He feels something like relief, almost dizzying. It's strange that this should be able to make him feel better—that something so simple can take out his misery at the kneecaps.

The moment he thinks it, the black cloud roars back up in his chest, suffocating.

Some change in his body language or the tension of his muscles must be obvious, because Wilson gives him a knowing look and pauses the video with his thumb.

“Whoomp, there it is,” Wilson says. “Brain gremlins. Right on schedule.”

The Soldier squints at him.

“Brain gremlins,” Wilson repeats, like it explains anything. “The reasonable little voice in the back of your head that tells you you're an awful person who doesn't deserve nice things. You've been stuck in the tar pit for a while, right? And now you're taking a break from the pit via little squishy mammals, but the gremlins don't want you to. Because they _suck_. They love the tar pit. Do you love the tar pit, man?”

“That's clearly a rhetorical question,” the Soldier says.

Wilson rolls his eyes. “Steve tell you what I do for a living?”

The Soldier shakes his head.

“I'm a counselor at the Veteran's Association,” Wilson says. “I guarantee I've heard weirder things in a way less articulated way than whatever you're trying to manage. Just word-vomit till the right shit comes out. I'm not going anywhere.”

The Soldier gnaws his cheek some more, until he tastes the warmth of copper and replaces his teeth with his tongue.

“You're a vet?” he asks at last.

“I served my time.”

“You killed people.” It's not really a question. Wilson nods. “Did you like it?”

Wilson blows out a startled breath. “You don't start easy, do you? Damn—okay.” He rubs his upper lip, covering his mouth, frowning at his own feet. His phone, balanced on his kneecap, wobbles. “It's not something you talk to civilians about, right? But, yeah, I sort of did. Or, well, it wasn't the _act_ of killing, so much, more like...I liked the idea that I was making a difference, and a kill count's an easy way to convince yourself you're getting ahead. Hell, that's literally what they pay you for, it's what you signed up for, are you really supposed to hate it?” Wilson shakes his head slowly. “I got to realize what I was doing wasn't making any difference. I was just shooting people. Figured I could make more of an impact doing pararescue.”

“I liked it,” the Soldier says, looking down at his single clenched fist. “I was good at it. Thought I was doing the right things for the right—I didn't know it was wrong. It was—Murray liked flowers,” he says, halfway to pleading and not sure what for, digging his nails into his palm; looking at Wilson and then away, when Wilson's face is too gentle. “General Murray, he, he liked flowers. He gardened. He was good at it, and he liked doing it, he liked doing something he was—I didn't have anything else to—” A frustrated, involuntary noise. “You killed people. For your country, when they asked you to. You...stopped.”

Wilson nods. “My friend got shot down, and it really fucked me up. I came to thinking both sides were just throwing kids into the meat grinder. Pointless. Got angry. Couldn't do my job anymore, so I went home.”

The Soldier can't find the words right away, but Wilson waits patiently, quiet and relaxed.

“I'm not—angry. That they made me kill people,” the Soldier says haltingly. “Specifically. I'm angry they _lied_ about it. Made me think I was—they told me it was making the world a better place. I keep thinking if I'd known, I'd've—done something. I'm...” He trails off, the blackness coming up in him, aching in his chest.

“Miserable,” Wilson says, and the Soldier closes his eyes tightly. “Blaming yourself. You're wondering what might've been different if you'd made a left turn. If you'd said no. Figured it all out sooner. Maybe you're thinking if you'd shot your CO in the dick, you might've saved the world a whole lotta grief. Maybe you're thinking if you'd shot _yourself—_ ” The Soldier's eyes snap open. Wilson's expression is wry. Empathetic. “Hey, your whole _history_ might be, like, beyond the most fucked-up shit I've ever seen, but that doesn't mean there isn't parallels with every other soldier hauling their nightmares home, yours truly very much included. This is just, y'know, a grand reinvention of the wheel, with some extra-fun bonus awful piled on top. Fundamentally. Not to belittle anything you've gone through, or anything, but—”

“No,” the Soldier says, surprised. “I—I appreciate that.”

“So, you feel like shit,” Wilson says. “You're feeling guilty and angry and whatever else. You're goddamn miserable. Hey, so what?”

The Soldier blinks.

“So fucking what?” Wilson says, spreading his hands. “You gonna feel _less_ miserable laying here till your muscles turn to spaghetti? Look, when I came back, I sat in a dark apartment all day 'cause I didn't want to silhouette myself in any windows, and got my groceries delivered so I didn't have to go outside, and ordered whatever-else I needed off the internet, and after four months of _that_ I was so sick of myself I could've taken a one-way trip to the river, you know what I mean? Sometimes you've gotta kick your own ass, man. Get out of your way.” Wilson clears his throat and crosses his ankles. “You feel like you've got to stay guilty, do your penance, feel awful all the time, but really, man, who does that help? Doesn't bring anybody back. Doesn't make it so nobody's been hurt. The best thing you can do to make up for it is get better, find something that makes you happy, go volunteer at a soup kitchen or something, make a real difference. Won't wipe out the past, but nothing will. You gotta—give back joy. Forward momentum. Right? That make any sense?”

“Yeah,” the Soldier says, and then he blurts, “How? How do you—”

“Well, _first_ ,” Wilson says, “You get outta your damn bed, walk down the hall, and we'll play whatever weird board games Steve has laying around. And then tomorrow, you get up again and do something, and the next day, and the next, and at _some point_ maybe you feel less like stabbing yourself in the ear when you think about leaving the house, and then maybe even later you try doing that for, like, ten minutes, and maybe you freak out and hide in the closet for the rest of the day, but you _try again_. Baby steps, man. Ticky boxes. It's a process.” Wilson picks up his phone and starts scrolling through videos. “And this is me off the clock, just so you know. Samuel Thomas Wilson's Highly Suspect Guide To Not Being A Post-Traumatic Paranoid Fuck-Up, version two, still in beta testing. I don't play therapist for my friends.”

“ _Friends_?” the Soldier says—bewildered, almost offended. Did Wilson get his brains ripped out the same time as his wings?

“It's a curse,” Wilson says mournfully. “I got this thing about collecting sad white kids who need pestering. I think my Gran is puppeteering me from beyond the grave. Anyway,” he adds, tilting a kitten video in the Soldier's direction, “Somebody pulled Steve's dumb ass out of the Potomac. That counts for a lot.”

 

☙

 

True to his word, Wilson pesters the Soldier out of bed and down the hall, staying within catching distance without ever looking like he's going to reach out and touch. The Soldier grits his teeth through every moment of it: his lack of balance, the pole, the undignified shuffle that seems to be all his feet are capable of. The longest bones in his body hurt like someone's been beating on them, but he knows this pain: it's the pain of bearing weight after being strapped to a table for a week. He falls, more than sits, on the sofa Wilson directs him to.

They play backgammon for two hours, until Rogers comes in wearing soaked running gear, red-cheeked and red-nosed, looking oddly warm for all the snowflakes in his hair.

“Feel better?” Wilson asks without turning, sending one of the Soldier's pieces to jail.

“Yeah,” Rogers says. “Thanks for bullying me into it, Sam.”

Wilson looks at the Soldier and raises an illustrative hand, as if to say, _see?_ “Superheroes need a bit of bullying. Barnes, you gotta help me keep this guy in line.” Wilson looks at Rogers, and points a thumb at the Soldier. “And you, you boss him around too, keep him out of bed. Mutual accountability and shit.”

“Yeah, Rogers,” the Soldier says, catching a little of Wilson's bright mood, “Why haven't you been bossing me around?”

Rogers's expression is suddenly so open and delighted that the Soldier feels sick. Like putting something too rich in his mouth. It's the look of someone who's just seen something miraculous, something wondrous and impossible. Has the Soldier really been so dead and empty to deserve a look of that caliber just for joking around? He tries to keep smiling, holding the bluff, but something of his surprise must show through, because Rogers clears his throat and looks away, embarrassed but still glowing.

“Yo,” Wilson says, into the awkward silence. He taps the dice. “Your move, slowpoke. I haven't got all day to kick your ass again.”

When the Soldier casually rolls double sixes, Wilson makes an outraged noise.

“Guess I'm a lucky guy,” the Soldier says, and Rogers, for the first time, laughs.

 

☙

 

The newly arrived Joey machine—which, true to its name, fits with a bag of formula in a small backpack—for all its equipment-free advantages, means one mortifying thing:

The Soldier has to use the cane.

The cane itself isn't terrible. If he doesn't use it, his lingering vertigo and the weakness in his legs won't allow him to get down the hall, let alone into the living room. Its soft rubber tip, even combined with his new uncertain shuffle, makes no noise when he goes into the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water. The grip, designed for stiff elderly fingers, doesn't really hurt the tender bones of his hand unless he leans on it with his full weight. Having something tactile to hold in his right hand makes the ghostly sensations in his missing one a little less overpowering.

He hates it. He _hates_ it. Actively, thoroughly, and without logic. He hates everything it represents. He fantasizes about lighting it on fire and flinging it from the third-story window. He banishes it to the closet when he sleeps, even if it means he has to risk falling in the morning to get to it. He leaves it outside the room when he takes a bath. The only reason he hasn't broken it over his knee is because he'd need two hands to do it.

His all-consuming hatred of it must be obvious, because even Rogers picks up on it. Out of the blue, while the Soldier is trying to read one of Rogers's books and the smell of the food Rogers is cooking only makes the Soldier feel a little nauseated, Rogers says, “You know, I had to use a cane for nearly a year when I was about eighteen.”

The Soldier looks up and says, “Yeah?”

Rogers nods over the carrots he's chopping. “I had a really awful fever that winter, and I got, I don't know, some kind of nerve damage. I think I hated that cane more than anybody's hated anything. I kept trying to leave it at home and always wound up on the ground.”

“Sounds familiar,” the Soldier says. “Is this is a story about sucking it up?”

Rogers shrugs. “Just sympathizing. Personally, I fought it 'till the second I didn't need it anymore, but I wouldn't really advise following my example. It was pretty exhausting.”

“Everybody needs a hobby.”

Rogers laughs, and the conversation seems like it's reached its logical conclusion, so the Soldier goes back to the book. It startles him, a moment later, when Rogers adds, “You got so annoyed by it, you started telling me a man could out-stubborn anybody but God. Eventually you just started pointing at the ceiling when I got het up. Confused the hell out of anybody who wasn't you, me, or my ma.”

The Soldier doesn't raise his eyes to look at Rogers—can't bring himself to, can't think of anything to say—but the letters turn to gibberish on the page.

 

☙

 

Rogers isn't just calling him by Barnes's name.

Rogers _thinks he's_ _Barnes_.

The real deal. In the flesh. The complete package. Rogers thinks he's reached into the grave and pulled his friend out whole, if a little worse for wear. “Bucky” isn't just a convenient name passed onto a man who never had one, not just another designation from a long string of handlers who needed something to shout: Lazarus, Winter, Manito—

“Bucky” isn't random. Bucky is _him_.

It seems painfully obvious in hindsight. Rogers has been calling him by Barnes's name since the first time they fought in the street, alluded to a shared history, but it's washed over him as irrelevant, just another label, no more significant than Tank calling him 'sweetheart.' Irrelevant, because Rogers needed to call him something, and why not the name of his old friend? What did it matter what name Rogers used? The Soldier beats himself up for being distracted by grief and withdrawal, starvation and pain, and—oh, hell, he can't lie to himself about this: distracted by his own overwhelming self-pity. Now that he's thought it, though, he can't get it out of his head. Beyond the basic offensiveness of that idea, its practical consequence is this: his current well-being, the feeding machine and the sheets on his bed and the clothes on his body, the very fact that he's alive, all of it is contingent on his resembling Barnes to—apparently—an uncanny degree. That alone is enough to make him feel sick and uneasy.

But the Soldier doesn't just _resemble_ Barnes, he comes to understand, staring at Rogers's dust-covered laptop on the wrong side of 0400, Barnes's sparse Wikipedia page staring back at him balefully. It's more than just a resemblance. The coincidences are too striking. Sergeant James Barnes is captured as a POW and held by an Arnim Gustav Zola; a Dr. Zola peels open his _hauptwerk_ in the name of science. Sergeant James Barnes is lost in the Eastern Alps in 1944; Murray, wildflowers behind his head, tells the Soldier that he was brought over from Russia in 1951. Sergeant James Barnes was a record-breaking sniper; the Soldier has never, to his knowledge, missed a distance shot.

More to the point, if he pulls his hair back from his face and turns his head slightly, what he sees in the mirror matches line for line the 'iconic' historical photograph of Barnes—taken, the web page informs him, only days after Barnes's rescue from the HYDRA factory in Austria. Both of them skin and bones, identical down to that little white scar under their right ears—the scar the Soldier might have wondered about, if he'd had any sense, because his body doesn't keep a mark unless it's gaping around his bones. Not a little nick like that, like something a broken bottle or a sharp rock might make. It must have been from the before, he thinks; from the wildcat days, he'd realized, looking at it, and then he'd thrown up in the sink.

And then there's the knowing.

He doesn't mind the things he doesn't know; that's just common sense. You don't miss the things you're not aware aren't in your head. But it's the things he knows without knowing _why_ he knows them that make him want to claw at his own brain. It's worse than he ever could have imagined, now that he has the context. It was bad enough when it was a formless mess, the thing that made his shots go wild and his fist freeze in the air when Rogers spoke; bad enough that his body trusts Rogers implicitly unless he watches it like a hawk, catching himself in unguarded moments with an exposed back. It's the things that were lurking inside him before he opened Rogers's purloined computer—things he recognized when he saw them, deja vu crashing through his head like a wrecking ball. He reads things and he knows, _knows_ that some of those facts are incorrect. He has an upsettingly visceral reaction to the web-page telling him Rogers was born in July. It's wrong, it's dead fucking wrong. He feels it like lead in his belly. And he doesn't know how.

As much as he hates to admit it, it's within the realm of possibility that the deja-vu feeling is some vestige of Barnes, lurking in the back of the Soldier's brain. Unfortunately, that doesn't explain why he's kept these things and not others. Why, if he remembers that Steve Rogers wasn't born in July (it could be a clerical error, for god's sake, why does it have to _mean_ something?) then why does he not remember any of Barnes's preferences? If the Soldier is, in fact, James Buchanan Barnes—and it appears that he is—it seems as though Rogers took up more real estate in Barnes's brain than his own personality ever did. The Soldier can't dig out the bones, and it eats at him. Another thing that bothers him is: did Pierce know? Even as he asks himself, he has his answer. Pierce must have known. In all the time the Soldier was under Pierce's thumb, his mission to the helicarrier is the only one where they didn't strap the mask to his face. Did it stop mattering? Did it matter, on his last mission, whether anyone recognized him? Unless, he thinks, sickened—unless that was the intent: sending out the one monster in their menagerie guaranteed to bring Rogers to his knees.

The Soldier's memories are slippery at the best of times, but he's staring down a nightmarish level of uncertainty. At some point, this body was occupied by Sergeant James Barnes, Howling Commando, loyal American soldier, best friend of Captain Steven Rogers. When did the exchange take place? When did Barnes fade away? When was the Soldier born? He doesn't remember a transition point, a confusion of identities; only the ravine and the cold and the rock, his desperation to live when it became obvious that he wasn't going to die quiet. Was some shadow of Barnes still in him then, or was Barnes knocked out of his body in the fall, their shared brain pulped by the impact, healing into—him? Is the Soldier a leftover?

A mistake?

And if he is, if the Soldier was born a blank slate on the floor of that ravine, a lump of clay for HYDRA to mold the way they wanted—why did they need to keep burning him out of himself to make him work?

It hasn't been all that long, from his perspective, since he came sideways to the idea that he's the product of science: Zola's clockwork man, strong because he was designed to ignore pain, unkillable because Zola was afraid of death, empty because it was convenient to his handlers. More fool him for thinking that was the sorriest possible explanation for his existence. At least in that version of reality, he was created for a purpose. This—this is much worse.

The Soldier never wanted to know who he was before the Russians scraped him up off that frozen river, and now he's found himself living down the hall from the only conceivable person who could actually tell him.

I mean, you have to laugh.

 

☙

 

With a head full of uncomfortable maybe-truths and distressing realizations, the quiet of Rogers's apartment is more suffocating than ever. Rogers is a creature of habit, once Wilson has kicked him back into gear; he gets up at 0530 in the morning, runs what probably amounts to a marathon, drinks an over-engineered high-calorie smoothie that uncannily resembles the Soldier's old pre-tank nutrient slurry, and then, if he doesn't have to make some kind of public appearance, settles in for a long day of what seems like nothing, at least until the Soldier manages to figure out the motions. Time spent on his desktop computer or smartphone, that mostly seems to involve emailing friends, colleagues, and a person connected with something called Public Relations. Time spent reading, pencil in hand, making incomprehensible cursive notes in the margins, appears to be a concerted effort to catch up on the history he missed. On Sundays, Rogers doesn't run, and cooks what looks like all his meals for the week. The freezer is full of stew and curry, the fridge stacked with cooked chicken breasts and raw vegetables and hard-boiled eggs in plastic containers. Rogers is always eating. If their metabolisms are remotely similar, it's no wonder the Soldier's felt like death warmed over since Insight took out his liquid meal ticket.

He misses La Cueva fiercely: the noise, the chaos, the odd jobs, the way there was never less than three people within shouting distance, usually shouting themselves. The heroin, too, if he's honest with himself, although he'd as soon pull out his own toenails than admit that it's still got its claws in him. He wants to think of the heroin like he does the cane, a thing that can be put gracefully aside once he doesn't need it anymore, but his body has other opinions. He can still smell it at night, when his ghost-limb twitches and burns and clenches its fist, clawing him almost literally from sleep.

He needs _work_.

The Soldier makes the mistake of asking Rogers: “What do you want me to do?” He means it as an exchange: what can I do for you, how can I make up for my expenses, how can I justify my presence in your living space—will you give me a purpose? Rogers isn't a handler, would probably be horrified by the comparison, but surely he understands the concept of mutual benefit. People, he's come to understand, don't take from each other without giving something in return. The Soldier can't see what Rogers is getting out of this one-sided arrangement. At least Tank—

He doesn't want to think about Tank.

Rogers looks appalled, and then sad, and then very gentle. In that disarmingly sincere way of his, Rogers says, “I just want you to get better, Buck.”

So he's on his own.

The problem is, there's only so much a recent amputee with the joints of an eighty-year-old man can effectively _do_.

He starts by training himself how to trim his remaining fingernails by holding the clippers between his toes, because god help him if he's going to ask Rogers or Wilson to do it for him. It involves most of an afternoon and a lot more contortion than he's really ready for, in his state, but the sense of accomplishment he gets when it's done is worth the pain. After several less than fruitful attempts to get his too-long hair out of his face, he's about ready to steal Rogers's safety razor and get rid of it all, any resemblance to people he wants to forget be damned, when he remembers the videos on Wilson's phone. On the internet, apparently, you can find anything. There's a entire video-based community of amputees teaching other amputees how to do things. He's yet to face down a zipper, or shoes, and he's not sure there'll ever come a day when he'll need to chop a watermelon, but the woman who demonstrates several ways to put up hair should, in his opinion, be nominated for a medal.

Unfortunately, the internet also contains news sites.

Even though the images are tactfully blurred, no amount of pixelation can entirely disguise the blood-spattered walls or the limp sprawl of the bodies on the floor. Even as he feels himself skid sideways into panic, disconnectedly, as though he's watching himself from far away, he detects a distant sort of moral outrage. It's like the desecration of a tomb, smearing these pictures around for people to gawk at; it's like pissing on their _graves_.

It's Rogers who finds him in the closet later, whimpering and panting like a gun-shot dog, half out of his mind and mostly unconscious. In that soft, broken-open way of his, Rogers murmurs, “Oh, Buck,” and “Hey, hey, it's okay, you're all right.”

“You g-gotta,” the Soldier tries, and grits his teeth, yanking his grammar back under control before he opens his mouth again. “Look at the computer. Please. And tell me—” His voice fails him. He puts his hand over his mouth.

Rogers obligingly goes over to the laptop, which is overturned on the bed, probably mostly dead. Rogers frowns at the screen; hisses an obscenity. He hits a button a few times, and then he says, “Why're you torturing yourself with this? The comments section alone is just—”

“I gotta know,” the Soldier says, “How many.”

“Oh,” Rogers says. He looks over. “It was six. Six civilians. Sam and I got the reports before it hit the news.”

Through his teeth: “Who?”

“They never gave us names—I guess they thought we didn't need to know. Uh, this page has the names of the HYDRA agents, but none of the civilians, which is...”

“Disgusting?”

“I was going to say 'typical'.” Rogers grimaces. “If there's one thing I've learned about the twenty-first century, it's that the big news folks still don't care much about crime victims who aren't, well. White and affluent.”

“They were people,” the Soldier says. Exhaustion makes his voice sound thin, even rougher. He realizes he's trembling in little waves, skull to toes. He closes his eyes. “They were _people_. What does it fucking matter if they were—” He discards _addicts; homeless; poor_. “They were just kids,” he says finally, and wraps his arm around his aching torso.

“I'm sorry,” Rogers says, and the Soldier doesn't have the energy to yell at him for it. It's obvious he means it, which is probably important, somehow. Examining that will be something to distract him once he's done shaking to pieces on the floor of a closet. He desperately wants something in his hand, a cigarette, a needle, anything, or he's going to dig his nails into his own face. Once he remembers the bullet casing, he fumbles it out of his pocket and squeezes it in his hand, stroking his thumb over the metal, turning it round and round. When he looks up, a little calmer, Rogers is watching him.

Rogers is always watching him. Looking for hints of Barnes, if he had to guess. Does the Soldier move like Barnes? Talk like Barnes? The way he walks, the way he writes, the way he smiles—did he learn those, after, or are they bred in the bone? Was he using Barnes's muscle memory the first time he fired a rifle? The second time? The last?

It doesn't bear thinking about too hard.

“C'mon,” Rogers says, kneeling at the entrance to the closet. “Let's get you warmed up. It's concrete under there, you mook. We always said we'd never sleep on a cold floor again after the war, so don't you make a liar out of me.”

A mumbled “not sleeping” is the only thing he can manage to shoot back. He lets Rogers sit him up, move his three-and-a-half limbs like a doll, untangle him from the mess he's made of his feeding tube. Luckily for him, it hasn't come unhooked from his body or the Joey. If lucky's the word.

Rogers smiles. “Tell it to the judge,” he says, and hauls the Soldier to his feet.

 

☙

 

Mission ready.

No.

Mission ready.

No.

Mission ready.

Fucking _no_.

 

☙

 

 _Mission ready_ on a ten minute looping track, white-knuckled losing battle, slipping a little further down the rope with every blank repetition, I ain't ever gonna be mission ready again, you fuck; he's going to grind his teeth to powder inside of a week but it won't matter because he'll never chew food again, probably, and—

 

☙

 

Rogers's suite isn't just quiet. It's _unsettlingly_ quiet: the quiet of funeral parlours and forests before an earthquake and concrete rooms after the body's stopped twitching, the kind of quiet that means more than just _alone_ ; it means bad things coming. Not only is the insulation of the suite exceptional—with all the windows closed, the outside world might as well not exist—Rogers seems determined to make as small an audible footprint as he can. He doesn't watch television, uses headphones when he listens to anything on his computer, and mostly takes calls outside. He doesn't talk to himself or hum or whistle. He stays out of the Soldier's way, now that the Soldier doesn't need a spotter to make it down the hall. Like he doesn't want to intrude. The Soldier isn't exactly jumping up and down to talk to Rogers, but being stuck in the far end of a dead-quiet apartment is driving him up the walls—and that's only not literal because he's still welded to the fucking cane, and isn't capable of climbing over an ottoman, let alone a vertical surface.

The Soldier has enough presence of mind these days to work out that his brain's less jumpy-paranoid when he's surrounded by human activity—or something that replicates it, anyway, and since Rogers is doing such a piss-poor job at making himself a nuisance, the Soldier grits his teeth and takes Wilson's advice. He makes a habit of using his assigned bedroom solely for sleep, and—proving his theory—delights Rogers when he shuffles his way out to the living room every morning when it hurts too much to stay in bed any longer. When Rogers is out, he makes do with whatever the internet can provide: videos, podcasts, streaming radio. Music might've soothed the savage beast, but for a beast that never wants to be savage again, it's voices that do the trick.

Regularly forcing himself out into the open means a few things, practically. For one, he's spending more time around Rogers on a purely incidental basis, because Rogers is either in or passing through or within a sightline of the living room anytime he's home—which, since Rogers doesn't seem to have much of a life when he isn't saving the world from HYDRA, is more often than not. And that's—fine. In theory. It just makes the Soldier uncomfortable, how a glance is enough to make Rogers smile like the sun's shining just for him. On one hand, it's pleasant to be smiled at, and Rogers has a nice smile, but on the other hand, Rogers is smiling because he's seeing his childhood friend, and the Soldier—isn't, exactly, is he? He's the shell of a man who used to exist in full, curtains left up over an empty frame, just window dressing, and according to the bathroom mirror, window dressing that sure as hell isn't a patch on the cocky, handsome bastard in the oval frame on Rogers's bedroom bookshelf, the one the Soldier found while snooping and was half-tempted to lay on its face. It's paired with a photograph of Margaret Carter, an agent he recognizes from some of the articles about Barnes. He hopes this Carter woman is long dead and not waiting in her own cryosleep, another bullet from the past to torture Rogers with.

For another thing—and the reason he _didn't_ touch the frame, after all—is that after venturing in more rooms than just his own and the bathroom, the Soldier can't help being disturbed by the suite itself. Something he learned about people in Philly was that they...he doesn't know how to articulate it. They effect the area where they lay their heads. They carry their lives into a space. The vagrant girls who moved through La Cueva had at least one thing in their backpacks that wasn't strictly functional for survival. Even in her moldy little room, Queenie painted flowers and curly vines around the baseboards. Cruz hung various cheap plastic things from the doorknobs, from drawer pulls, wherever something would dangle and sparkle: windchimes and fake crystals and ratty tinsel. Tank plastered her walls with pictures clipped from magazines and newspapers. Seven had three necklaces she'd never take off, not even—as the Soldier discovered, to his discomfort and their hilarity—when she and Tank were fooling around in bed. Hell, the Soldier has his bullet casing, and he's not even a whole person. Rogers is living in something out of a magazine.

The suite is obsessively clean, which could easily be attributed to the bare-bones dust-free military style both Townsend and Murray seemed to wallow in—if you're expecting to be moved around, you don't want to put down roots or leave a big mess. But where Murray had his gardening periodicals and baffling salt shaker collection, Rogers doesn't seem to have much of anything. If the Soldier tried to deduce a personality based on how Rogers keeps his apartment, he'd have a hard time, excepting the largely useless 'freakishly neat,' 'owns an unused record player,' and 'reads a lot of history'. The framed prints on the walls don't seem to have any personal meaning that he can unravel: a tree, a train station, a lighthouse on a stormy sea, an abstract squiggle. To make matters worse, it's not as though Rogers has just moved in, because the Soldier found Rogers's paperwork during his second sweep for information (third drawer down in the computer desk, under a checkbook and an ancient personnel file), and Rogers has been living here for almost two years. The Soldier is making a pretty vague assumption, admittedly based on squat life and houses he's killed people in, but he thinks two years in consumerist America is a lot of time to accrue... _stuff_. The ephemera of a life. Willow trees and wooden ducks. Isn't it?

It strikes him as sad, if he thinks about it too hard, but the feeling only ever lasts as long as it takes for Rogers to talk at him like he's good old J.B. Barnes.

 

☙

 

He's putting his hair up one morning when something moves in a way he's not expecting, and he loses the elastic band off the tips of his fingers. When he brings his hand down, there's a lock of tangled hair in his palm.

He throws it away, thinking maybe he's been too rough, tying his hair up too tight or scrubbing his scalp too hard when he washes, but it happens again a few days later, and again, and again, until there's three large bald patches he can't hide even with his hair down: two smaller ones on the right, by his temple, and a fist-sized one on the left, behind his ear.

Rogers is sympathetic, of course. “Stress, probably. And maybe your body's taking a while to get used to the formula? I bet it'll grow back healthier.”

Rogers has to eat his words when the bald patches stay bald, and then get bigger. The Soldier watches the pattern, inspects the stuff that falls out, and it seems to him that the shed hair is thinner and more brittle than the hair on the top half of his skull, maybe-or-maybe-not coincidentally the part that doesn't rub against his clothes or his pillow. He's losing some clumps from the top, but not near the same quantity as the sides and around his nape. To Rogers's credit, though, he's also the one who suggests a solution for the Soldier's newfound resemblance to a mange-ridden dog.

“It'll look more intentional if you shave some,” Rogers says. “Like...this,” and fiddles with his phone before turning it around. The screen shows a handsome middle-aged man with a beard and no hair below his parietal ridge, everything else left long and tucked into a small loop. When the Soldier flicks Rogers a look, Rogers shrugs. “Seems to be popular. You'd blend in.”

Right. Cripple with one arm and a feeding tube—it's the _haircut_ that's going to make him inconspicuous. Sure.

Rogers has a point, though.

Afternoon finds the Soldier climbing gingerly onto one of the kitchen barstools, a towel on the floor, Rogers untangling an extension cord with a comb between his teeth. It's stormy outside, a moody downpour, and the clouds are very low. The Soldier has a good angle on the street while Rogers sorts himself out; watches bobbing umbrellas rush past on the far side of the road, a pair of wet crows on a power line, a woman trying unsuccessfully to prevent a toddler from jumping in a puddle. It makes him smile. He even manages to stay present and not check out when Rogers touches his head, parting his hair with what feels like the edge of the comb, twisting half of it on top of his head to keep it out of the way.

Rogers testing the clippers at hip level doesn't make the Soldier flinch, which he counts as another personal victory, but he can't help jerking his head to the left when Rogers brings them close to his ear. It's not the noise—they're not that loud, and they sound more like an electric toothbrush than anything medical—but something about the vibration plus Rogers's hands catches him under the sternum like a hook.

“Stay still,” Rogers admonishes lightly, and rolls his eyes when the Soldier goes rigid. “Yeah, okay, but remember to _breathe_ , pal.”

The Soldier relaxes in increments, but when Rogers touches the back of his head and lines up the clippers, he clenches his jaw and stiffens reflexively.

Rogers, too perceptive for his own good, catches it this time. “Hey, is—is this okay?”

“Habit,” the Soldier says through his teeth, chagrined. He'd been doing so fucking _well_.

“Oh.” There's a lot, in that syllable. “God, sorry, should I—”

“It's _fine_.” The Soldier reaches up, grabbing the clippers and half of Rogers's hand in the process, pressing the metal against his temple. Doing it himself seems to break the cycle of paralysis, and Rogers manages to turn the clippers on without the Soldier turning into a statue or jumping three feet; he just holds onto the seat of the barstool a little tighter than he strictly needs to.

After a while, his grip loosens. Rogers's fingers rest carefully on the Soldier's skull, pressing in counterpoint, keeping his head upright without touching a square inch more of his skin than is absolutely necessary. The motion of the clippers downgrades from unsettling to neutral to soothing as Rogers continues to not hurt him. A flash: stone walls and a straight razor, his right hand cradled against his belly like it's broken, someone's hand on his neck—and then it's gone. He doesn't remember HYDRA shaving his head, in Zola's day or Townsend's, which means they probably had it done while he was woozy post-cryo or heavily sedated, and Murray'd axed the haircuts entirely, so it must be from before they brought him to America. It's too hazy to really bother him, and Rogers is being so gentle.

He startles a little when Rogers says, so quietly the Soldier can hardly hear him over the clippers, “My ma used to do this for us.”

There's nothing he can say to that, so he doesn't. Lifts his chin. Closes his eyes when Rogers rests a thumb and two fingers against his forehead.

“She was really good at cutting hair,” Rogers continues. “If she hadn't been a nurse, she'd have been a good hairdresser. I guess it's kinda similar—they're both trying to make people happier, in a way.”

“Sounds nice,” the Soldier says, vague and agreeable.

“Yeah,” Rogers says, to some part of that. “She really, you know—fussed with it until she had it right. Had the eye.” Rogers fumbles the clippers slightly. “Probably embarrassing her right now. She got a kick out of—we were opposites when we were kids. You started out blonde and I started out dark, and we swapped as we got older, but for most of '29 we looked like twins.”

 _That_ wakes him up. “What? You're fucking with me.” Children don't change like that, do they? Like animals growing new pelts in the winter?

“No, really! Actually—” Rogers laughs. “They used to say—your ma and my ma, I mean—they used to say they picked up the wrong babies at the hospital, because I looked more like yours and you looked more like mine. For a while, anyway. I think—” Rogers holds up one finger, sets the clippers down, and jogs to his room. He returns after a minute with something small between his fingers, which he hands to the Soldier before he picks up the clippers again. He blows hair out of the blades while the Soldier looks at what he's been given.

It's a tiny, blurry photograph, two inches by three inches, colorless and greasy-looking with age. At some point in its life, it's been messily taped into an album. Two small boys, maybe four or five years old, with their arms over each other's shoulders and their heads bent together, as though they're absorbed in conversation. One is a little taller than the other, and has fairer hair, but otherwise they're nearly identical: their smiles, their soft faces, their white shirts and their suspenders.

The back says: _James & Steven, 1923_.

When the Soldier's been staring at it for more than a minute, Rogers points at the blonde boy and says, “That's you.”

The Soldier expects to feel upset, disgusted, angry, _something_ any moment now, but—nothing happens. Maybe the photograph is too old, too unreal, like something from a movie, or maybe it's because he doesn't recognizes any of his own features on the boy's face: that's not his nose or his jaw or his eyes, staring back at him; the little face is too round. The mouth, maybe, but he could say the same about the other boy. He can hardly tell them apart, except for the hair. The amorphous doughiness all children seem to have before their sharp edges start to form under their skin. It's self-flagellation and he knows it, but he tries for one grasping moment to reach down into the dark waters and pull up something, anything at all, a flash of someone's face or the edge of a ball bouncing down an alley, but he sees the faces of a thousand women when he closes his eyes, any one of them potentially his mother—or none of them.

Nothing.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, and tries to give the photo back to Rogers. He feels unclean, as though he's peered in a stranger's window and caught a glimpse of something that doesn't belong to him, something he shouldn't have seen.

But Rogers smiles and says: “Keep it.”

 

☙

 

The problem—one of many, multiplying problems, and not even the first, seeing as the first is always the cravings, _still_ , because his pain isn't killing him but it's soul-crushing in its constant monotonous sameness, and Sousa's wonder drugs might be keeping outright agony at bay, but they aren't doing a thing to beat back the everyday aches or the tingling in his missing limb or the goddamn boredom—the problem is that when he's alone, he can't fucking _relax_.

Camping out in the closet with the laptop is about as close as he gets to calm, but there's issues inherent in that strategy too. He can't see anybody coming, just hear them, and spatial blindness is what's causing half his episodes, so he forces himself to sit in the exposed openness of the living room instead, because at least he can see what he's hearing—and, on top of that, he can't stand the way Rogers looks at him when he finds the Soldier holed up in the closet like a shit-scared little kid. He's better when Rogers is around, but the feeling of letting his guard down, the way he lets it down subconsciously and _constantly_ when Rogers is in the room, makes him feel ill. There's no winning, and the price of failure is too high. He can't afford a mistake, or at least the parody of himself he's become can't afford mistakes, which means his heart-rate goes absolutely mental whenever the front door opens and he's not expecting it.

He's terrified of them finding him. Of course.

It's a possibility he hadn't thought of in Philly. Once he got out of DC, away from the danger zone, he'd been too scared of everything else, too focused on being good for Tank, that something in his brain maybe replaced them with her, a false sense of security. He was with a handler so he wasn't going to be taken by a different handler. Nobody'd be looking for him. Complacency got its claws in him deep, complacency and heroin and outright laziness, and look where it got La Cueva—look where it got him. He's a twitchy hyperfocused mess and he can only sleep through the night every few days when the exhaustion catches up with him, but if it's the cost for not getting taken, he'll live with it.

He's just not sure how long he can _survive_ it.


	5. waiting for daylight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Well_ , he types into his phone, _I'm outside_ , and sends it. In a fit of wilfulness, he adds: _Now what?_
> 
> Less than a minute later, Wilson texts back: _thanks, mr. descriptive, that's a real help._

People are really weird.

It's not a new thought, but Steve's thinking harder about it now that he's been subjected to half an hour of impassioned (if basically civil) diatribe between the loud couple at the only other occupied table, while he's been simultaneously trying to get his internal troops marshaled about the _other_ thing that's bothering him.

The weird thing, he's thinking, as the opinionated couple gather their things and head out into the chilly evening, is this particular and pervasive cultural... _thing_ that certain modern people cling to. Most of them don't act like they're aware of it. It's an uncritical superiority when it comes to the past—to history. This is the year such-and-such, with all its technology and its medical advancements and its instantaneous global social media net. Utopic, for all everybody seems to complain if their wi-fi lags, and therefore better than the primitive days they've left behind. Senior citizens are 'of their generation,' simultaneously patronized and excused for holding outdated views on race and gender. People who don't embrace smartphones with both hands are 'Luddites'.

Even a lot of the people who don't agree with that mindset seem to expect _Steve_ to need to be excused for that kind of thing, as though he didn't protest alongside his neighbors, as though it didn't infuriate him that his ma got paid less for doing more, as though he didn't fight like hell to have the Commandos integrated. Or like science stood still until 1980, or something. Hell, Steve remembers meeting famous doctor after famous doctor while he was grinding through the tour circuit; it'd been this big deal for the papers, the Miracle of Modern Medicine meeting the great reconstructive surgeons of Europe at the height of their careers, putting broken boys back together again. He hadn't known that work was being done on the atomic bomb while he was preparing to follow Bucky into the dark, but he wouldn't have been _surprised_ ; would've been even less so, if someone had told him Howard would have a hand in it. He's not a caveman, and neither are the old guys he plays chess with at the VFW.

All the same, Steve has to wonder if twenty-first century folks don't have the advantage, in some ways. They have access to so much more raw information than Steve and his peers ever had, ever could have, even if they'd spent every waking moment in the library or pestering the Princeton College boys. And more than that: the ability to parse it all. Steve had figured out how Google worked pretty fast, how it's based on keywords instead of phrases, but he sometimes feels like he's been cast into a pit of loose pages—like he's always missing some important piece of context, the one little detail he needs to put everything together coherently and make an informed decision. It's overload, he guesses, and he shouldn't be embarrassed that he's aces at military strategy and awful at organizing his own opinions, but the shame sits in the pit of his stomach anyway, heavy and unhelpful.

Which is why he's here, at 7:30pm on a Wednesday, waiting for Priya to finish a gigantic take-out order so he can ask her for advice. It's not a thing he can ask Peg, or, god help him, any of the Avengers—they'd know who he was talking about in a nanosecond, and they'd be biased. Priya's one of the six grad students who run Steve's default coffee shop like it's a medieval siege, all of whom wear false lashes long enough to cut somebody, and none of whom take any guff from rude walk-ins. They're refreshingly blunt, overeducated kids (kids? when did Steve start thinking of them as _kids_ , god, they're not much younger than _him_ ) who couldn't care less that Steve's marginally famous, especially Priya, an Instagram model and a part-time auto-mechanic who dreams of giving up food service for long-haul trucking, and who's been completely blasé about answering Steve's increasingly specific and decreasingly dumb questions about etiquette in the twenty-first century. Steve doesn't have a crush on her, exactly. He just wishes he'd had her as a gunner back in '44.

The customer finally wobbles his way out under the weight of a dozen bagged paninis and a tower of cardboard cup holders, heading off for what looks like one helluva long night at the office, and Priya flops into the chair opposite Steve, tilting her hand dramatically to her forehead with a sigh.

“Poor sucker,” she says when she straightens. “The interns accidentally deleted a week's worth of coding and their firewall went tits-up. And they say retail's the pits.”

“Every job's got its rough edges,” Steve says affably.

“And some are serrated,” she shoots back, and Steve can't help grinning. “Speaking of tough stuff, what's up, buttercup?”

“I have a—” Steve pauses and frowns at the table top. “It's not really a moral question, exactly. I think I know what the right thing is, and I'm trying to do it. More of a what-would-you-do-if-it-was-you question.”

Priya gets one foot up on her chair and wraps her hands around her knee.

“I have a friend who just came back from—overseas,” Steve says, which isn't so much lying as it is missing the point.

“Yeah? How's he doing?”

“Not so good,” Steve says. Her brows turn up in the middle and she nods. “He lost an arm, and, uh. His memory, actually, he—he doesn't remember who he is.”

Priya reaches over and squeezes the back of his hand. “That blows dead bears, Steve. I'm so sorry. I can see how _you_ feel about it, i.e., awful, but how's _he_ taking it?”

“Better than anybody would expect. I think he's frustrated by his physical limitations, mostly.”

“Reasonable,” she says, slouching back in her chair. “Okay, carry on.”

“He's living with me because...” Steve stops, biting his tongue. He can't say _because everyone thinks he's dangerous_ or _because he's in danger_ , both of which are true but require a lot more explanation than he feels comfortable giving. “He's got nowhere else to go,” Steve finishes weakly. “He knows who I am, I mean—conceptually. And I've been telling him who he _was_ , just, trying to act like everything's normal, or at least as normal as it can be.”

Priya makes a thoughtful noise. She's quiet for a while, staring into space, and then she says, almost-but-not-quite touching her lipstick with her knuckles, “Has he been asking you stuff? About his life or his family or whatever?”

“That's what I wanted to pick your brain about,” Steve says. “He just doesn't seem to be interested. In any of it, actually. If I left him to his own devices I don't think he'd ask. I think he's got a right to know, because he was a great guy—well, he still is, but you know what I mean. I just worry that I miss him so much that I'm, I don't know. Being a bad friend. By expecting too much too soon.”

She smiles wryly. “Steve. That, right there? Is not a bad-friend thought process, mmkay? Most people don't analyze their actions nearly that carefully. Your guy's really lucky to have you. _But_...” Priya grimaces. “It's a hard call. There's loads of reasons why he might not be asking. But I think—does he ever tell you no? Stop? About anything, not just Nostalgiaville.”

“He's not shy about telling me off if I'm coddling him, if that's what you mean.”

“Well,” Priya says, pointing at her jaw, which Steve knows is only recently stubble-free after two years of estrogen and expensive laser treatments, “As the resident expert on saying _fuck you_ re: the person everybody expected me to be, it sounds like he feels safe letting you know when you're pestering him, and that's a good sign. So if it was me, I'd keep it up. I mean—” She tilts her hand from side to side. “Within reason. Personally, the idea of forgetting who I am is _hella scary_ , that is some legit nightmare fuel, so I'd be super grateful if some nice guy came along and tried to help me remember, but. Eh. Trauma changes people. I think you should maybe be prepared for alternatives, just in case he ever straight-up decides that's not who he wants to be.”

Steve looks at her, and then looks at the ceiling, and then looks at his hands. “I don't—I don't know if I can accept that,” he says, feeling a flush come up on his neck. It's not a very nice thing to think, let alone say aloud. Let alone say to _Priya_. He feels the ghost of his mother looking over his shoulder, shaking her head. Obstinate, that's what he is—Bucky'd always said _pig-headed—_ but unlike any other time he's fought for a thing he can't let go of, his confidence is out to sea and getting damper all the time.

Priya just shrugs. “You might have to. Real life isn't like the movies. People don't usually wake up and suddenly remember everything they lost.”

“If anybody could, it'd be him,” Steve says, and tries his best to smile. “I'll—I'll think about what you said.”

“The big question is, are you willing to change your mind? If it's what's best for him?”

Steve takes a deep breath. “I. Yeah. I think so. I sure you're right, I just—” _I don't know if I can lose him again_ , he finishes in his head, and clamps his teeth together so it won't escape.

“I hear you, dude.” Priya finger-guns over the table, bracelets clacking. “Acceptance is a process and all that gooey shit. It's good you're thinking about it and asking the hard questions. That's step one.”

“I thought acceptance was step one,” Steve teases, and she mimes throwing something at him.

Outside, a tightly-clustered pack of teenagers crosses the street, laughing and rough-housing. The stragglers dodge a car. Priya follows Steve's gaze and murmurs, “Don't you dare,” but it's ineffectual. She stands up as they make a beeline for the glass door. “Well, there's my cue. Thanks for making my shift a little less boring, Steve-o.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Steve says fervently, pulling his hood up before any of the marauders can recognize him, and slipping out the door between two laughing girls.

Bucky's asleep, or pretending to be, when Steve gets home. He's not sure what to read into Bucky's stubborn habit of leaving his bedroom door wide open, not to mention the rest of it. Bucky often goes to bed early, and he can't possibly sleep through the noise Steve makes in the kitchen or the light from the hallway, but as soon as he was ambulatory, Bucky went and positioned his bed at the exact angle necessary to see through to the living room when he's laying down, so—it's _intentional_ , for sure, even if Steve can't figure it out. Not that it's any of his business to understand, but he still selfishly wants insight into Bucky's motivations, if only so he can be more helpful. Sometimes, these days, it feels like they're treading water blindfolded at opposite ends of a pool.

_Are you willing to change your mind? If it's what's best for him?_

Yeah, Steve tells the Priya in his head. What kind of question is that? Of course he would. He'd set himself on fire cheerfully, if that's what it took. There's nothing he wouldn't suffer to bring Bucky home. He'd do anything Bucky needed, anything in the whole wide crazy world.

He just wishes Bucky would tell him what that was.

 

* * *

 

The Soldier finds the easel when he's looking for a spare towel to bleed on.

Vertigo gets the better of him post-bath, pre-clothing. Condensation on the floor and too much heat in the air, the cane taking a time-out on the doorknob, the phantom arm tricking him into thinking he can overextend himself, and he goes down hard, hitting his face on the edge of the counter, kicking the Joey halfway to the bathtub. He's lucky it's not his nose, but it could have been better: he splits his skin along the whole top edge of his orbital bone, blood streaming down his face like his eyebrow's taken a job as a waterfall. An amateur's first slit throat. He sits on the floor for too long, waiting for a handler to come and swat clotting powder onto his face, to hose him down. Still as a statue. You don't move when someone's touching you.

When the real world hits him, it's with a physical pain in his chest, and he hauls himself off the floor with one arm and one flailing stump, looking deliberately away from the mirror when he gets himself up over the edge of the cabinet. Blood on the corner, blood on the floor, blood between his toes. It's a mess, and it's going to be more of a mess when he bleeds through the half-dozen tissues he's pressed to his face. He slides along the wall with one shoulder, unable to hold the cane and the tissues at the same time, sliding the backpack along the floor with one foot. Thank god the hallway is hardwood. ( _There's_ a thought he never expected to have.)

Something in him goes cold and quiet when he sees the easel, shoved in the back of the linen closet with a sheet draped half over-top. It's crushing underneath itself a pile of canvases and cloth-bound books with rotting spines. Some of them are sloppily bound with no covers at all. The old box beside the pile must contain other supplies. Paints, maybe. Brushes. He has no idea what goes into a piece of fine art, either process or tools; it never occurred to him to wonder, before. But he knows that it's an easel, all the same.

Rogers was an artist. If the Soldier refuses to trust the thing in his head that tells him it's true, the internet is happy to confirm it. Rogers went to school for it, painted backsplashes and signage, advertisements, the occasional half-dressed woman. Commercial work, art for hire. A museum in New York wrapped up a year-long exhibition on his work a few months back; the Soldier doesn't know enough to say whether it's skill or fame that bought Rogers the slot. But, the Soldier thinks now, it's not inconceivable that somebody who liked making art would make art that wasn't for sale. The Soldier shot at things that weren't targets. He thinks of Luke, sharp and unwanted: Shoshanna's round hips in pencil. Sketches, informal things—personal things. People. Friends. The Soldier looks at the yellowed books with something he'll call nausea and is probably fear.

He realizes he's been standing still in the doorway of the linen cupboard long enough for his tissues to start dripping, and grabs the rattiest towel he can see.

Rogers hasn't come home by the time the Soldier finally clots, applies butterfly bandages (should he be surprised that Rogers just has a stash of them lying around? probably not), and gets his clothes and the Joey-pack on. He finds himself back in the linens almost against his will, breathing hard, squeezing the cane handle hard enough to make it creak.

 _They're just drawings, you coward_ , he tells himself. _Get a fucking grip._

The tactic, predictably, doesn't work. He stands unmoving until the thought of Rogers appearing and _finding_ him shaking in a cupboard drives him to his knees in front of the pile. The old easel is much heavier than it looks, real wood instead of the cheap fiberboard he expects, and moving it off to the side levers a large canvas up with it, smacking him in the shoulder, scaring the daylights out of him. Between panic and exertion, by the time he leans all the canvases against the easel, his heart is beating revoltingly fast.

The sketchbooks are ancient, waterstained, and haven't been well-loved. The edge of one spine crumbles under his fingers. The state of them couldn't have been helped by Rogers piling other things on top of them. It confuses him. Rogers has shining windows and a drawer of spotless silverware; makes his bed with corners sharp enough to cut. This is almost a—a punishment. The Soldier tips sideways into a memory of stone walls, the drip-drip-drip of cold water, rancid leather in his nose. The gag. The place you put things when they don't deserve to see the light. He comes out of it whining, gasping, digging his nails into his palm. It doesn't take much effort to convince himself to look at the book, but long minutes pass before he can make his arm do anything but shake. When he finally opens it, it's with an impulsive flip that almost takes the rotting cover clean off.

He expects, with anxious self-absorption, that he'll see Barnes's face straight off, a whole book of Barnes's face, but there's a dozen pages of architectural drawings and random objects before he gets to any people. The drawings are clustered together on the front and back of pages, like Rogers was trying not to waste a single inch of paper. From what the internet's implied about economic conditions for the average person back then, Rogers probably didn't have enough pocket money to justify being frivolous with his sketchbooks. The first portrait, and the second, and the third, squished between sketches of windows and stray cats, are of a woman the Soldier might call sharp-boned if he was feeling charitable and gaunt if he wasn't, wearing wavy chin length hair and a slim chain around her neck, caught in the act of washing dishes, sewing, smiling. He's good with faces—had to be, and he doesn't feel like it fucking matters anymore whether that was a happy coincidence for HYDRA or whether they _made_ him be good with faces, because he's certainly not going to ask—so it only takes a glance for him to realize she has to be related to Rogers. He tries to convince himself she could be an aunt, or a cousin, but he knows she's the mother, as sure as he's known anything.

The next page has another building and a couple of women who aren't Rogers's mother, then one of those women with a bearded man; the same woman again, looking oddly familiar; a self-portrait; an old truck; a bowl of fruit; a whole page of somebody's dog playing; a baby crawling on the floor; another building; a dark-haired girl; Rogers's mother; Rogers again—

The Soldier flips through the rest of the sketchbook quickly, but there isn't a single drawing of Barnes in it. He picks up the next sketchbook down, which turns out to be older; Rogers's grasp of anatomy and light a little wobblier, his lines lighter, less confident. He can practically see Rogers's determination steaming off a few of them, the same subject drawn over and over, trying to render it more true to life. He recognizes the same people, too, but again—no Barnes. He starts to wonder if Rogers reserved a book just for his friend, but the Soldier gets through the stack, eight of them in all, and finds only one half-finished sketch, fuzzy around the edges like somebody moving during the flash of a photograph. It's of an unsmiling Barnes looking straight out of the page, frowning a little, a line between his eyebrows. He looks young and terribly serious.

The Soldier only registers Rogers's presence when he sits down next to the Soldier, making him flinch so hard the sketchbook jumps in his hand. Rogers winces and says, “Sorry, sorry,” crossing his legs without much regard for the nice dress pants he's wearing. He's left his jacket somewhere and loosened his tie, but it's obvious he's just come from a public event. The Soldier can smell about four different colognes on his cuffs, up close.

“Should've shown you those earlier,” Rogers says. After a pause: “I guess I was kind of scared I'd overload you. Sorry, that's—not a very good excuse.”

“It's fine,” the Soldier says automatically. He flips the page, distancing himself from Barnes's unfinished face. Something about it disturbs him. The next page is several angles on the same wooden chair.

“It's really not. They're yours, along with a bunch of other stuff in those boxes, if you want them, clothes and things, but—”

“They're yours.”

Rogers looks confused, and then sad. “Buck, they're _yours_. You drew those. You really don't...remember them at all?”

The Soldier's head snaps up. He stares at Rogers, but Rogers hasn't presented himself as the kind of person who'd tell mean jokes, and besides, his face is all-over honest concern, and the Soldier can't figure out any logical reason why Rogers would lie about a thing like that. He says nothing for long enough that Rogers's expression moves from concern to acceptance, answering his own question, and nods.

The Soldier says, hesitatingly, “You were an artist.”

Rogers shrugs, tilting his head into it. “Professionally, yeah. I used to get pissed off at you sometimes, on account of you being a natural and not wanting to do anything serious with it after we graduated, but you loved it, so I could never be real sore about it. I'd come home from a whole day on a ladder in front of a mural, and you'd've finished your shift at the library an hour before, and you'd be sketching Ma while she made dinner.” Rogers gestures at the sketchbook in the Soldier's lap. “Those all got mixed in with my stuff in the archives. I can see how they made the mistake—we had a similar style.”

When the Soldier tries to imagine it, he has trouble constructing what a home in the 1930's might have looked like: Rogers's house is smoothly filled in by La Cueva in his mind, and Rogers's mother by Queenie with chin-length hair. He can't picture himself with a pencil. How many times has he used his hands for something other than killing? Swinging a baseball bat. Stitching up the twitchy girls. Touching Luke. Not a lot, in seventy years. “I don't remember,” he says, and is he ever tired of being asked to say that phrase.

“You will,” Rogers says. “It's just a matter of time.”

Cold sweat on the small of his back. Like he needed _another_ thing to be afraid of.

When he doesn't respond, Rogers stands up, moving as if to pat him on the shoulder and awkwardly retracting it at the last moment. He says, “Well, I'll leave you to it. Give a shout if you want help moving them to your room or—anything at all.”

Rogers goes, but the Soldier sits in the linen closet for a long time, looking at the drawings. He tries to follow Rogers's thought process, beginning with Step One: wake up in the twenty-first century. Flounder for a while, probably. Get contacted by an archive that says, _hey, we've got a bunch of your things, come and pick them up_. Bring them home, find that they're Barnes's—and then what? Dump them in the back of a closet? Shit. Grief, he realizes—not anger. Not a punishment. Rogers put all this in the back of a room he'd probably enter the least, draped a sheet over it so he wouldn't have to see it, and tried to forget. The Soldier feels a hot wash of empathy, quickly shadowed by annoyance. This is a legacy he doesn't want. It's not his. It's _Barnes's_.

Still, it's that nagging, perverse sense of curiosity that makes him take one of the sketchbooks after he covers the rest with the sheet. Compared to the others, it's probably the most recent. The last one Barnes touched before he went to war, maybe; it's the only one that has any blank pages in the back. Rogers is on the fire escape, on his phone, which allows the Soldier time to steal a pencil from the jar on Rogers's desk, take everything back to his room, and shut the door without being observed. He's anxious enough to retreat into the closet for this, and can't dredge up the energy to be irritated at himself, even as he turns to a blank page and his palm starts sweating.

His attempt to sketch the bed goes far better than it has any right to.

Something in his brain knows how to hold the pencil; sees the perspective, the way the light bends into the folds of cloth where he's pushed the blankets to the foot of the bed, the heaviness of the wood—and interprets it two-dimensionally. It's not anything a professional would be proud of, he suspects: the effect of time passing without practice, the muscles of his hand unaccustomed to the motions, but there's an undeniable skill in it, a silent understanding. He's correcting mistakes before he's consciously aware he's made them.

The sketchbook goes skittering out of his grasp as he flings the pencil across the room, snarling.

“Get _out_ ,” he hisses at his own hand.

 

☙

 

Can't get away from Rogers and his sorrowful eyes. Can't get away from the agents, they're coming for him, they're following the things in his blood and his bones, it's only a matter of time before they break down the door and take him back to the chair. Can't get away from Barnes under his skin. (“That's really quite good,” says Subjekt Acht.) He doesn't want to be empty and he doesn't want to be Barnes, but the alternative is being a crippled wreck with a liquid leash and that's almost worse. Rogers's pity. Someone's long-dead accent. (“Come on, Joe DiMaggio—!”) Echoes of Pierce's voice, stuck on a loop. He puts on a video and turns up the laptop's volume high enough to make his headphones hiss, but the men whisper underneath, slide into the sibilants, boom in the bass. (“That's really quite good. Were you—”)

He loses time.

Wakes up on the roof freezing and alone and baffled as to how. Clutching the backpack to his hollow belly while inside it whirs empty. No shirt. It isn't snowing but it might as well be. Too cold to move. He rubs at his cheek until his fingers slide off slick. Waits for the sound of helicopter blades that never come. A gunshot that never cracks. A hand on his shoulder instead.

Striking out with his left arm but his left arm isn't there, hits something organic with his stump; hits it again. Claws with his right. A hand grabs his wrist and holds. He kicks. Tries to roll over but the sky is blinding white, razors cutting the back of his eyes, and he makes a sound like something dying. It's enough to allow for his pinning. Once in a house he saw a collection of bugs under glass, metal speared through their delicate bodies, held and preserved. Shiny like metal. Thinks of the tank and gags on nothing.

 _Hey hey hey_ , someone says, _Hey, you're okay, it's me._

Torquing his spine and kicking out but he's weak, tries to grab the wrist and break it but it's too far away. Cold in his bones like the door's been shut but the door is open. There is no door. Cold all wrong. He twists around the middle and it hurts deep. Sobbing out. The voice saying: _It's okay, Buck, you're safe, it's okay, just breathe, I need you to breathe._

And _fuck_ it hurts.

He wheezes in a too-large lungful and it feels like swallowing acid all over again, searing down into his abdomen. Coughing hurts more, but there's a sensation like something tearing inside him when he tries to hold it in, so he goes limp and lets it happen. Rogers is making soothing noises above him. He only catches a quarter of the sounds, edges and beginnings. Tastes blood in his mouth. When Rogers lets him go, he curls into a ball of his own hurt, coughing. He thinks—

A blank.

Someone asks questions but he isn't supposed to answer. What comes next is orders and he'll pay attention then. Easy to tell: the tone of the voice changes, some quality of it, some anatomic or mechanical effect, the cords or the volume like a palm to the temple, projecting. The voice doesn't order and he waits. He waits so long he thinks they've left him. Alone in the cold and no orders. He shakes. He'll open his eyes and confirm—soon. Not yet.

Something is placed on his belly and he lifts into the air. He struggles a moment, instinctual, but he realizes instantly it's Rogers. His head on Rogers's shoulder, his nose behind Rogers's ear, one of the places a body's scent is strongest, and the body knows Rogers; the body goes limp. He tries to fight it and only succeeds in making some new hurt in his core. Rogers adjusts his grip and moves oddly. Opening a door, he realizes, when it slams shuts behind them. Stairs. Rogers is saying something but he can't parse the words.

The heat of the apartment is like a slap, and he goes away.

 

☙

 

Flashes:

The hall. The door.

A low murmur like the ocean; close, then far away, then close. A single word, too loud.

Fear.

Less fear.

Rogers sitting in the armchair, a book in his hands. Heavy. Steam at his elbow; the smell of peppermint. Settling in.

Gratitude. And: too exhausted to be angry about it.

 

☙

 

He pretends to sleep for a long time after he surfaces, ignoring the dull pain in his bones that tells him to get up and move. Rogers checks on him every hour, sometimes touching him, sometimes not. The contact is always butterfly-gentle. He'd almost rather have Rogers hit him. It's not the Soldier Rogers is comforting—it's his dead friend.

At the bottom of the well of his own aching misery, he wonders: is this it? Is this all he gets? Pain and fear and HYDRA under his skin, Barnes clinging where HYDRA doesn't, dependence on a man who'll always see someone else in his eyes? Is this the price of his freedom? Part of him wants to turn back the clock and do it all over again, take any path but the one that lead him here. Part of him wants to return to his season of happiness, before the curtain came down; or even before—before Townsend, before Zola, before the deer and the river, running from the valley in a different direction, out and away, a different life. Part of him just wants it to be over.

He thinks about how easy it would be to stop trying. To give up. Immediately on the heels of that, he corrects himself with a jolt of horror: it wouldn't be easy. It would be easy at first, and then it would be long and terrible and hard. He can't exactly go out and shop around for something high-caliber enough to take himself out in a single shot, and then, there's the fear that he might miss, might make a mistake, might wake up piecemeal in a skull knitting itself back together. Same goes for poison. He's learned he can't exsanguinate; can't drown. He'd have to starve himself, wouldn't he? And how long would that take? Weeks, maybe months of agony, and even then—would it kill him? Or would he fall into some kind of living torpor, like a toad waiting under the earth for rain? How long would Zola's serum keep his heart beating?

And then there's Rogers, who's sure as hell not going to stand by and _let_ him.

He laughs. What else can he do? He laughs. Shakes with it silently, under the covers, gripped with hysteria. He's only alive because killing himself is too hard. _I can't die. Just cut off my head. I can't die_. Oh, fuck. _Fuck you, Zola_ , he thinks, and sets himself off again, shaking until the bed creaks and he has to gather himself thread-by-thread back under control.

Well, he thinks later, wiping his eyes: if he isn't going to die, he might as well try to get some living done.

 

☙

 

“I'm only going to sit on the steps,” he says, when Rogers comes up short and has a visibly internal war about whether he should let the Soldier go or tackle him to the carpet. The Soldier tries to lighten the atmosphere: “I need something to look at for five minutes that isn't your exhilarating white walls.”

It charms a smile out of Rogers. “Yeah, okay, fair enough. You got the stairs?”

“I'll be fine,” the Soldier says.

He's dubious about that last, even with the Joey safely in its backpack and the cane in his hand, but the wide wooden railing is sturdy against his side, and getting down the requisite two flights is easier than he expected. Opening the door is the hardest part; he can't help but envision a gun waiting for him on the other side, a team in heavy riot gear, the van with its monstrous full-body restraints. The most terrifying part is that they wouldn't be necessary. After a full minute of berating himself to just turn the fucking handle already, there's nothing outside but a straw welcome mat that's seen better days.

He doesn't so much lever himself down to the concrete step as fall down, catching his breath with his head below his shoulders to fend off a rising dizziness. He lets the cane drop between his knees. When he finally manages to lift his head, he discovers it's evening, light starting to dim. Late afternoon, maybe; it's the edge of winter, the sun still setting early. He's lost track of when, in the blur of days, and gives in to a sudden need to know. The phone Rogers gave him says it's 1613. The sixth of February. The air is brutally crisp and clear, frost still on a few rooftops where the sun hasn't been able to reach; he could have worn another layer and a glove and not have overdressed, the concrete like ice under his ass, but he's okay, for now.

He's okay.

The slow breath he lets out makes a long white plume, diffusing away.

 _Well_ , he types into his phone, _I'm outside_ , and sends it. In a fit of wilfulness, he adds: _Now what?_

Less than a minute later, Wilson texts back: _thanks, mr. descriptive, that's a real help. what're you looking at?_

 _A road and lots of trees without leaves_ , the Soldier pecks out laboriously with his thumb. He squints. _Three kids on skateboards. Woman with baby stroller and dog._

 _i spy somebody who's never written an after-action report in their whole damn life_ , Wilson says. _congrats!_ It's followed by a tiny picture of confetti and balloons. After a moment: _so, how's that going for you?_

 _Not writing after-action reports is pretty great_ , the Soldier says. Wilson sends back a little angry face. _It's nice out here. Don't feel like hiding in the closet._ Adds, wryly: _Not sure how I'm going to get back up the stairs._

 _grit & determination? legs??_ Wilson suggests helpfully. _srsly though, that's great. go you! i'd come over and give you a hi-5 if i wasn't stuck at work_. Another pause, and then: _'now what' is kinda smth you gotta decide for yourself. honestly having limited options is helpful at the beginning cause obvs you're not gonna hop a plane to bermuda or sign up for an MBA tomorrow or anything. start small etc. you tell me, man. what makes you happy?_

The Soldier very deliberately doesn't think of Philadelphia.

He waits so long to reply that Wilson texts, _yo, no wrong answers, first thing that pops into your head._

 _Kitten videos_ , the Soldier types, feeling like an idiot. He clarifies: _YouTube_.

 _good taste!_ Wilson says. _youtube makes everybody happy. so do something with that. find new stuff. make a playlist of the best stuff. hell, make a private channel, record some vlogs, do the vent thing, go nuts._

 _What the fuck is a vlog_ , the Soldier says. Then: _Should I be paying you for this?_

 _hey, sure, there's an idea, pay me with a really well curated dumb animals playlist_ , Wilson shoots back, and the Soldier feels the corner of his mouth tug up.

He puts his phone in his pocket and leans his elbow on his knee, looking out into the street. Clouds are coming up slowly on the far horizon; he can't tell what cardinal direction it is, where exactly the sun is setting behind him, and finds that for the moment he doesn't mind. It's a beautiful evening, really. If he doesn't think too hard about the stairs.

 

☙

 

Mid-morning, a cold and sulky drizzle outside, and Rogers answers a landline call in the kitchen instead of taking it to the fire escape. His uncharacteristically terse “Hello?” makes the Soldier look up from his book. In a fit of paranoia the previous week, convinced that Barnes was taking over his brain and he was losing facts, the Soldier began a frantic effort to test his memory by whatever means necessary. The internet suggested memorization; Rogers has several books of poetry. The Soldier isn't sure if he can classify his success as winning or losing—just because it works doesn't mean it's not kind of pathetic—but his ability to memorize things appears to be intact: when he gets stuck in a loop, he can now recite Robert Frost under his breath to break out of it, sometimes. For...whatever that's worth. In the grand scheme of things.

At the moment, watching Rogers turn into a different person in front of him, poetry is the last thing on the Soldier's mind. Rogers listens for a moment, blank-faced, and then he says, “Where?” and “How soon?” His gaze flicks to the Soldier and away, too fast. “Okay. Understood.”

The Soldier doesn't move while Rogers pulls out his cell phone and types at speed, thumbs flying. Rogers sighs, dropping his phone, scrubbing his hand over his hair, and then types again. He waits and types three more times before he puts it back in his pocket and looks up at the Soldier.

Rogers tries to smile. “So, that was my...boss, I guess. They've found—they think it's an active base. A big one, in Nevada. My team's going in to raid it.”

“Okay,” the Soldier says. He doesn't know how to feel. He's not afraid or angry or anything at all, or too many things to pin down with one word. A brief spike of excitement in his throat, dampened by shame. “Be careful,” is all he can think to say.

“Are you going to be okay on your own?” Rogers asks. Quickly: “I'll have a couple of my friends check in on you, but—”

“Yeah,” the Soldier says, even as Rogers is saying, “—it'll be a few days, I think.” They look at each other. Rogers is probably thinking of the roof, of coming back to find the Soldier somewhere improbable, frozen and brain-dead.

“I'll be fine,” the Soldier says.

He doesn't see Rogers leave, but he hears the engines of something large, far off, maybe hovering near the edge of the city, and a higher-pitched sound that's probably a transport plucking Rogers from the roof. The Soldier manages to sit in the dead-quiet apartment for just over five minutes before he's climbing the walls, missions on the brain for more reasons than usual, winding himself up tighter every time he moves and the resulting sound echoes emptily. He plants the laptop on the kitchen island and turns up the volume on a random video, just loud enough to sound like human voices murmuring as he prowls from one end of the apartment to the other, checking windows, checking doors, running his fingers down the spines of books for hidden surveillance. He runs through the routine twice before he's satisfied, although he's unhappy with the safety of the front door—is always unhappy with the front door. He thinks about the hypothetical agents living in the building, listening for his footsteps, and stops moving. Then, frustrated with himself, hops unsteadily. Thumps his cane against the floorboards when his bare feet don't make enough noise. He doesn't care what they hear.

 _Yeah, just keep telling yourself that_ , his brain interjects, as panic bubbles up under his skin, unwanted. Never wanted, except: it's biological, isn't it—panic? It's useful when there's something vicious bearing down on you, when someone pulls a gun, spiking reflexes into overdrive and sending chemicals screaming into muscles ready for action. Useful, in life-and-death scenarios. Here, it's useless. He refuses to give into the urge to check every egress point again, and twitches with the effort of ignoring it until he's sore and exhausted.

He's fallen into a wary doze on the couch when the buzzer rings and scares ten years off his life. His flailing arm hits the cane, previously leaning against the arm of the couch, sending it spinning to the ground and under the coffee table. Failing to grab it with his toes, he curses and stumbles to the intercom without it, smacking the button before he can second-guess the intentions of whoever's on the other end—someone he's just given intel about the presence of a human in Rogers's suite.

When nothing happens, he leans against the wall next to the microphone and says, “Yeah?”

“Hey,” a man says, staticky. “So, uh, I was going to bring pizza? But Steve said you can't have solid food, so I raided the Japanese grocery and got—” A rustle. “—like, eight kinds of juice, I hope that's not too weird. Also darts. Can you buzz me in? I couldn't fit a jacket over my sling and it's about negative eight hundred out here.”

Well...okay.

Not HYDRA, then.

The Soldier presses the button. A minute later, he's opening the door for a short, solid blonde man with three plastic bags in his left hand and a sling on his right. The sling could easily conceal a weapon, but since it's covered in smudgy felt-pen drawings of flowers and stick-people, he's going to take a wild guess and assume: probably not. The impressive shiner helps, as do the hearing aids, the bandaid over the guy's half-missing eyebrow that reads “OY VEY!” in several different scripts, and the ancient one-eyed dog.

“Hi, Steve's-Mysterious-Roommate,” the guy says. “I'm Clint Barton. Did Steve tell you I was coming?”

“Not specifically,” the Soldier says. “But you look like you've had a worse day than me, so I guess you can come in.”

“Yeah,” Barton drawls out slowly as the Soldier locks the door behind the dog, “You're probably thinking this is some kind of demeaning babysitting scenario, but if anybody's babysitting anybody, it's you and my gigantic honking concussion, so maybe don't punch Steve too much when he gets home?”

“I think that'd hurt me a lot more than him,” the Soldier says, and takes one of the bags before Barton tilts into the wall. It's heavier than it looks, but he manages to carry it to the island without an incident. He lets Barton settle in while he gets down on his knees and roots around under the coffee table for the cane, keeping a cautious ear out for Barton's movements, but the dog sniffing the floorboards is the only thing he hears. There's a rustling noise as the Soldier finally gets a grip on the hateful thing, and Barton says, “Wow. Steve still lives like a monk, huh?”

“Glad somebody else disapproves,” the Soldier says. That 'still' isn't exactly encouraging. Neither is the thing he sees when he straightens, which is Barton laying three throwing knives and a miniature crossbow on the counter. Barton backs away from them slowly with his usable hand held out from his body.

“Pat me down if you have to,” Barton says. “I wager this is easier than you staring at me for a couple hours trying to figure out where I've squirrelled 'em.”

The Soldier suppresses a sigh and walks over to do just that. He hooks his cane over Barton's outstretched arm while he checks the guy's legs, partially as a show of trust, partially because he's honestly curious to see how Barton will use it if he tries to attack while the Soldier's down a potential weapon, but mostly because it's there. “How do you know Rogers, again?”

“Tried to murder him and then helped him save the world,” Barton says. The Soldier, using the fridge handle to pull himself up from his crouch, flicks a glance at him. Barton shrugs, one-shouldered, making the cane bobble. “Oh, what, you thought you were the only one? Steve's like a magnet for brainwashed idiots, so I wouldn't feel too bad.”

“He's a magnet for something, all right,” the Soldier mutters, and Barton grins. It makes him look about ten years younger, a real sparkler, and the Soldier can't help the crooked little thing his mouth does in response. As a prophylactic measure, to shut up his brain if nothing else—because Barton slumping in Rogers's kitchen doesn't look in any condition to throw a punch, really, let alone a knife—he sweeps up the weaponry and puts it all on top of Rogers's hideously oversized fridge, where he estimates Barton won't be able to reach it without something to stand on.

“Cold, bro,” Barton says.

 

☙

 

“Swimming pools still give me the shakes,” Barton is saying, as he flicks another dart down the hall. The target hanging off Rogers's bedroom door is starting to run out of room in its bullseye. Barton is at the other end of the hall, practically in the living room, blindfolded because Barton's recap of the Battle of New York got a little far-fetched, and the Soldier called him on his shit. Which doesn't appear to be bullshit after all.

“Because it felt like drowning?” the Soldier ventures, handing Barton another dart.

Barton sticks it behind his ear and pulls what advertises itself as 'yuzu citrus cheese drink' out of his sling, brandishing it. “Cap me. No, it's the color—which, yeah, I'm aware, is completely fucking dumb, thanks, brain. You know when you go in a public pool, the high-faluting ones with the faux-Mediterranean tiles? And open your eyes and everything is turquoisey-blue and hazy and your eyes hurt?”

“Sure,” the Soldier says, obliging, although he doesn't. He winces when Barton empties the bottle, and takes a much more hesitant sip of his mostly-full curry lemonade. The way it burns on the way down might be the least awful thing about it. When Barton says _weird_ , apparently, he does not fuck around. Not that the egg creams Rogers once waxed nostalgic about sounded any better. Barton puts the empty bottle on the floor and the dog is there more or less immediately, trying to put his whole face inside it.

“Well, that. Kinda.” Barton gropes blindly for the dart on his head and throws it, saying “Aw, fuck,” before it even hits. It pings off one of the darts already crowding the bullseye and clatters to the floor.

“Would've hit center.” The Soldier sets his lamentable drink down next to the cane. Lucky wanders over, takes one sniff, and goes back to Barton's. “Don't throw anything, I'm grabbing these. So did you kill him? Loki?”

“What? No. I sent him to jail like a good government agent, what do you take me for?”

The Soldier stows the darts in his pocket and shoves Barton back another five feet. “But you wanted to, right?”

“Steve had to basically sit on me, yeah,” Barton says, taking the manhandling in stride. “Anyway, his brother took him to wherever freaky interdimensional aliens go when they've been bad, and later I heard that somebody killed him dead, but when you've been in this line of work long enough, _dead—_ ” He air-quotes exaggeratedly and the Soldier sticks a dart under his fingers. “—doesn't mean shit. So one day he's probably coming back to wait in my closet like the fucking bogeyman.”

“Ugh,” the Soldier says.

“Yeah. And—for a long time—” Barton pauses to throw a dart. Which lands bullseye, of course; the Soldier throws his hand in the air and rolls his eyes, even though Barton can't see it. “It was like even my thoughts were bugged. What if he was still in there? What if my opinions weren't mine? What if I just thought I was me and I was really somebody else? Would I even _know_? You get me?”

Cold sweat on his upper lip, the back of his neck. Barton pulls the blindfold up and looks at him. The Soldier doesn't know what his face is doing, but Barton reads it just fine. “Yeah,” Barton says, not unkindly. “I kinda figured.”

“Your dart privileges are over,” the Soldier says grumpily, to cover the sudden discomfort of being transparent. He throws one of his own, unsteadily; it at least manages to hit the board. His next attempt is gratifyingly close to center.

“You're compensating for a weight that isn't there,” Barton says. “Get some hip into it. Did you kill yours? I never heard the whole story.”

The Soldier drops his hand, holding his last dart. Raises it, throws anyway, not feeling the swing. It goes a little high. “No,” he says, “Somebody else did.” Not looking at Barton, and then making himself look. “Never really had the chance.”

He half-expects Barton to say _yeah, but you_ did _have the chance, you had all the chances in the world, but you'd've licked his boots to make the pain stop so you never fucking did_ , but Barton—doesn't. Just nods.

“He used to turn his back to me all the time,” Barton says. An offer, again, less pointed: you get me?

He gets it, all right.

Look how scared I'm _not_ of you. Look at all these opportunities you didn't take.

“He used to hit me when everyone else was hiding behind their guns,” the Soldier says. Explosive, unplanned: “ _Fuck_ there are some awful people in the world.”

“Yeah,” Barton says, half a tired smile coming up on his face. “But there's some good ones, too.”

They're dumping out the rest of the abominations in the kitchen sink, the dog watching them mournfully, when the Joey's empty-bag alarm goes off. The Soldier drops the bottle he's holding in surprise; he's never let the alarm go off before tending to it, but he's lost track of time, messing around with Barton, who seems like a good guy, really, if a little eccentric. He shrugs the pack onto the counter and shuts it up, releasing the long coil from its strap so he can cross the kitchen, tubing trailing behind him like a chain. He tries not to feel uncomfortable as Barton watches him gather disinfectant, a fresh bag, and three cans of formula.

He's pouring the second can into the bag when Barton says, “Okay, you have to hate the shit out of that. Don't lie.”

The Soldier shrugs. “Better than forcible nasal intubation.”

Barton looks at the ceiling. “Sure, hit the _lowest possible bar_ , why don't you.”

“I hate it less than the cane,” he allows. Barton gives him an arch look, the effectiveness of which is dimmed by his black eye. The Soldier puts the third can down and sighs. “I hate having an obvious weak point, and the thought of somebody yanking on it makes me want to vomit, but the alternative is _eating_ and that was a lot worse.” He gestures at Barton's hearing aids. “You can't tell me you don't hate those sometimes.”

It's Barton's turn to shrug. “I hate the everloving fuck out of them about ninety-eight percent of the time, even when they make things easier. _Especially_ when they make things easier. Thus is the nature of assistive devices, bro.”

“Then why—”

“Just seeing where you're at,” Barton says, unrepentant. “Nosy Parker, that's me. Don't worry, I think you're stupidly well adjusted, all things considered. I mean, god—can you imagine _Steve_ with one of those? Or a fucking _cane_?”

The Soldier, in the middle of priming the tube, barks a startled laugh and almost drops it. “He did have one, though. Back in the day.”

“He tell you about that?”

The Soldier's about to say, _yeah, in the guise of lecturing me_ , when he realizes, panicked: “You haven't—”

“Hey,” Barton says, lifting his hand like the Soldier's about to bolt, “I figured you'd've shared at least one embarrassing story about wee babby Steve by now, if you were gonna. Don't worry about it.”

When the Soldier's shaky fingers fail to slot the bag into its hook for the third time, Barton takes pity on him and holds the pack steady. It feels like a joke: how do two guys with one usable arm each operate a feeding machine? The Soldier buys himself time with the velcro straps, fiddling with them for longer than he strictly needs to, getting them lined up perfectly, pretending clumsiness. He takes a deep breath. “I don't know what's going to happen when Rogers realizes I'm not remembering anything,” he says, all in a rush, and then clicks his teeth together hard enough to hurt.

He jumps when Barton's fingers press firmly into his bicep, but he doesn't try to break away.

“Steve's told me enough, and _you_ ,” Barton says flatly, “Have had one of the shittiest potential lives a human being can have, and I know from shitty lives, okay?” Barton's furious, and the Soldier's glad he's enough in his head that he can tell Barton isn't angry at him; he's angry at something else, something nebulous between them. “Okay? I _know_. I got lucky, fell in with the right people, and because they've had shitty lives too, there's a rule, and the rule is _nobody gets left behind_. You can up and die, or you can leave your own self, but you don't get left. Okay?”

The Soldier nods. He thinks his eyes are very wide.

“If Steve never tells you that,” Barton adds, “First, he's an idiot, but secondly, I don't even think it'd occur to him in a million years to kick a traumatized vet out on his ass no matter _what_ happened, because I'm pretty sure that guy _invented_ the rule in, like, 1926, so I need you to not worry about that. Basically ever. The awful's over, if you can make yourself believe it.”

“There were good parts,” the Soldier informs the floor. “It wasn't completely—it wasn't always bad.”

“Yeah, see—I was in love with that bastard for sixty-seven hours,” Barton says. “Pretty fucking passionately. I would've done—” He digs his thumb in and the Soldier looks up. “There's always good parts. That's how they keep you coming back for more.”

Barton gives the Soldier a little shake and then lets him go. The silence that follows is heavy. What does a person _say_ to that? 'Thank you'? It's fucking insufficient—anything would be. There isn't a language that could manage it. And the Soldier is certain that Barton will wave it off uncomfortably if he expresses any shade of gratitude, so—

“I bet this stuff is really good,” the Soldier says instead. He jostles the Joey-pack.

Barton lights up. “Yeah? Have you tried it?”

“No point, I've lost most of my taste buds,” the Soldier says. “Dare you to. It's probably better than...” He gestures derisively at the bottles in the sink.

Barton grabs a can from the cupboard and cracks it open with a flourish. He takes a swig and then stops dead, cheeks puffed, and shoots the Soldier a look of utter betrayal before spitting it into the sink.

“ _Seriously_?” the Soldier says. “You'll drink lemon-cheese water but that's not good enough for you?”

“It tastes like olive oil and _icing sugar_ ,” Barton coughs. “Jesus _wept_. That is vile. That's worse than army food. That's worse than _Pediasure_.”

“Don't waste it, here—see if the dog likes it.”

The dog likes it.

They stare.

Barton says, “Let's...not think too hard about what dog food tastes like.”

“Let's don't,” the Soldier says.

 

☙

 

Barton takes the couch for the night, because “my ride's hitting the DC nightlife and isn't gonna be fit for man nor steering wheels anytime soon, this thing's got better back support than my bed, it's cool.” The Soldier dumps a couple of blankets on Barton's head and leaves him to sort himself out. Before he goes to his room, he weighs the pros and cons and takes Barton's weaponry down off the top of the fridge, leaving it on the island within easy reach. He'd rather know Barton's able to defend himself than feed his own specious paranoia.

He's glad he can _recognize_ it as specious, even if it doesn't help.

It's the paranoia that still has him curled up rigid under the blankets on the wrong side of midnight, irritated instead of lulled by the white-noise whir of the feeding machine, ears perked for the faintest noise, flinching at every house-settling sound and every bug hitting the window. His phantom hand clenched tight around nothing. _I live in a lonely house I know; that vanished many a summer ago_ , he recites desperately in his head, but the magic doesn't work: it's for distraction, that trick, not sleep. He nearly jumps out of his skin when Lucky comes padding down the hall and into his room. The dog heaves himself up onto the bed with a disgruntled noise.

“Wrong freakshow,” the Soldier whispers, as if an animal can understand a word he says, but Lucky just grunts and flops down hugely, his spine against the back of the Soldier's legs. The room instantly smells like old dog.

 _Fine_ , the Soldier thinks, annoyed and grateful all at once. _Be that way._

He wakes up to the sound of the front door opening, adrenaline like a boot to the chest, hurtling towards terror—and then he hears Barton laughing. He lets himself fall back down on the bed from the uncomfortable half-rise he'd twisted himself into, reaching for a knife that isn't there with a _hand_ that isn't there, and tries to remember how to breathe. Lucky shoots him a put-upon look from where he's migrated up to steal three-quarters of the blankets. When the Joey beeps at him for blocking the tube, kinked somewhere under his body, the Soldier crawls out of bed and gives his circulatory system something better to do than panicking. After shrugging on two sweaters, scraping back what's left of his hair, and washing his face, he feels almost human.

The girl on one of Rogers's bar stools, on the other hand, looks like she's gone ten rounds with a bottle of vodka and lost. Her air of body mist and regret hits the Soldier with an overwhelming nostalgia for La Cueva—unwashed bodies in various stages of strung out or hungover, monopolizing every available surface, waiting for whatever Tank was cooking to wind up in front of them. It didn't seem to matter that the food was usually on its way to expired, and almost always burned; they'd queue for it and hardly bicker, even when they were cats and dogs at each other the rest of the time. It was a comfort, some magic in Tank's hands.

Before he's really aware of what he's doing, the Soldier finds himself taking out a container of yogurt and one of Rogers's pre-mixed bags of frozen fruit, shoving them in the blender with a cup of orange juice like he's seen Rogers do after a run. He skips the nutritional powder on account of it smelling like chalk. The girl covers her ears and winces dramatically when he runs the blender, but she looks a little less like death once he hands a glass of it to her.

“Thanks,” the girl says, at the same time as Barton says, “Give.”

“You sure you wouldn't rather have a nice can of—”

Barton swipes the blender cup out of his hand and drinks what's left with a mutinous expression. The Soldier grins. When he looks back at the girl, she's slouching over her glass with both hands on it like she thinks it's going to run away, squinting at him.

“How do you do that?” she asks.

“Do what?”

“Your hair.”

He shows her.

“ _Witchcraft_ ,” she hisses. “Do it again.”

“When the hell are you going to need to know how to put your hair up with only one hand?” Barton asks.

“Next time I'm handcuffed to a radiator and it's giving me hella frizz,” she says. “Duh.”

The Soldier raises his eyebrows at Barton and flaps his hand at the girl: _she's got a point_. Barton rolls his eyes so hard a vertebrae in his neck pops.

They leave not long after, once the girl—Kate, he thinks he hears Barton call her—wakes up enough to manage the drive back to New York. Kate clatters downstairs in her high heels, accompanied by Lucky, but Barton hangs back momentarily.

“We're taking out those motherfuckers,” Barton says, leaning against the doorjamb on his uninjured side. “Yeah? Every last fucking one of them. We're burning them to the ground.”

Despair like a bucket of cold water. There's too many of them, the Soldier thinks: they're everywhere, spread across the world like a virus, compartmentalized and hiding underground, rogue units in plain sight, operatives waiting for orders, there's too _many_ — “You and what army?” he asks numbly.

“Bunch of superhumans with anger management problems and an indestructible physicist?” Barton shrugs. “Who needs an _army_?”

Barton's bandaid has fallen off in the intervening hours, and his hair's a disaster, and in the morning light his black eye is a horrific shade of green, but something substantial falls away, and the Soldier can suddenly see Barton as the world-class agent he'd implied but never outright admitted to being. He'd have to have been extraordinary, the Soldier'd concluded vaguely over darts, more than just a crack shot: one of a kind, or else that Loki guy wouldn't have taken him, but the Soldier couldn't see it last night, not with Barton playing the goof and baby-talking the dog. He can see it now.

The Soldier reaches up to tap Barton's bruised cheekbone with the handle of his cane, gently. Barton's responding grin has too many teeth in it.

“You should see the other guys,” he says, and spins on his heel.

The Soldier is willing to bet the 'other guys' are a smear on the concrete somewhere. He reassesses his previous judgment call; Barton, he thinks, didn't need the weapons the Soldier confiscated to be dangerous. He's willing to bet Barton could've taken out a STRIKE team with that set of darts alone, sling be damned. He can't help wondering whether Barton was injured in the raid Rogers was called to, or a prior engagement, lone-wolfing it. He decides it doesn't matter. The Soldier's been thinking of Rogers as—sort of a _mess_ , if he's honest, but he'll give this to Rogers: he has terrifying friends.

The living area still smells oddly of imported cheese drink and dog, so he wrestles on another sweater and opens the fire-escape window to air it out a little. At the end of the alley, the sun is struggling to clear the morning haze, but it's warmer than it has been, the new season reaching out hesitant fingers. He finds himself looking forward to being less cold. He's gained a little weight since Philadelphia, but he could stand to gain a lot more. Most of his skeleton is still visible, even if it doesn't quite look like it's about to burst through his skin anymore. And another thing: he doesn't know enough about DC to say, but maybe when spring arrives for real, there'll be flowers.

He leans out onto the sill and a woman appears upside down in front of his face.

Too relaxed; reflex hurts. He's flicked his cane up and is about to swing it like a baton when he recognizes her. The little redhead from the bridge, Rogers's partner, the one who managed to surprise him more than once, the one who made him panic and almost lose her because she wouldn't fucking _go down_ and they were going to punish him for it. She's evidently trying to keep up the tradition of scaring the shit out of him. She didn't move a muscle when he brought up the cane, not even a flinch, which irritates him more than it probably should. Did he lose all of his powers of intimidation the same time he lost the arm?

“God _damn_ it, lady,” he snarls, lowering the cane, “I could've knocked you into next week.”

“You wouldn't have,” she says, crossing her arms and swaying a little. Her knees are hooked around the top floor railing, no safety harness in sight. He misses, viscerally, being able to use his body like that. It feels like a slap to the face.

“Are you here to spy or babysit?” he says. “Because if it's the second one, for fuck's sake, you can tell Rogers I don't need you people in shifts.”

Her face creases. Upside down, he can't tell exactly what kind of expression she's making. “What do you mean, in—oh. _Clint_.”

He feels like he should be offended by her tone on Barton's behalf. “What's wrong with him? Aside from using the _front door_ like a regular human being.”

“Absolutely nothing,” she says. “Except I'd've saved time lecturing him on reckless personal endangerment now instead of later. He didn't seem contrite, did he?”

“The opposite.”

“Dammit.” A pause. “Nice undercut.”

The Soldier raises his eyebrows. All of the blood is going to her face; in a minute, it'll match her hair.

“Well?” she says. “Aren't you going to invite me in?”

He sighs and walks down the hall. Behind him, there's a scuffle and a clatter that's probably a lot more dignified than it sounds, the metal-on-metal _ting_ of something hitting the railing, and then the window sliding shut. When he turns, she's shrugged out of her leather jacket and is brushing invisible lines out of her jeans. He wasn't in the right mindset to notice details, the last time they met—for a given value of _met—_ but he thinks her hair is different. Her makeup too, maybe. There's something softer about her than he remembers, although maybe it's a case of not fighting for her life: standing instead in a white-walled apartment with no guns in sight. She's wary, though, for all that she's pretending a casual pose. Tension through her shoulders and the set of her mouth. It rubs him the wrong way for no good reason.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“Steve told me you were...” She gestures at him. He frowns. “I didn't believe him.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, turning into the kitchen and hooking his cane over the back of the nearest barstool, “Now you can have a good laugh. Coffee?”

She says nothing while he fumbles with the coffee-maker, just to have something to do that isn't standing still, extrapolating steps from watching Rogers run the thing once or twice. He's closing the lid when she finally toes off her shoes and pads silently into the kitchen, hopping up backwards onto the counter next to the fridge, crossing her ankles. She looks down at them when he glances at her. “Sorry,” she says. “I've been out of commission before, I know how frustrating it can be.”

The Soldier laughs. It comes out even less nice than he'd planned, startling him. “Sweetheart, I'm not _out of commission_. I'm out of the running. This is for keeps.”

“Steve said—”

“Rogers doesn't know shit,” he snaps, and then breathes out slow when she flinches, almost imperceptibly, around the eyes. _Rein it in_. Gentler: “He never looked at my file. If you want to know anything, ask Wilson.”

She presses her lips together tight, and then, surprisingly, smiles. “Why? I've got you right here.”

He tries to look unimpressed and probably manages annoyed. She blinks at him innocently, swinging her joined legs back and forth under the lip of the counter, splaying her toes in her socks. It's an act so obvious it's almost honest: look how tame I'm willing to be. She could kill him, he realizes. It wouldn't take her any effort at all.

He goes over to the bookcase and gets the manual, underhanding it to her on his way back. She has to lean forward to catch it, one heel striking the cabinet beneath her. “At the back,” he says, when she thumbs towards the beginning. The Soldier leans against the counter, as far from her as he can get without looking suspicious, and waits. After an examination of Zola's notes, she skims backwards, looking for something.

He can't tell if she finds it; she keeps flipping pages as she asks, “Do you remember shooting me?”

“Kind of,” he says, but she says over him, “—the first time.” When he shakes his head, she shifts the manual on her thighs and raises the hem of her shirt. There's a large scar between her navel and her hip, well-healed, but rough enough around the edges to suggest it was a mess when it was inflicted. Abdominal shots usually are. He can't remember shooting someone through the stomach and not killing them—doesn't remember shooting anyone in the stomach at all. It's a slow death, and he was never an interrogator.

“No,” he says. Conciliatory, he adds, “That'll be the answer to anything that happened after '91, incidentally.”

“Pierce,” she says, with a lot of venom. Enough venom to make him wonder.

“Were you the one who...” He can't say it. Swallows grit.

“No. I was unconscious.” A twisted little smirk that seems more natural on her face than her previous smile, almost self-deprecating. “Your last—no, I guess, one of your last targets—the guy you shot through that wall? It was him.”

The Soldier turns to look at where she's pointing. Nothing comes back to him at first, but then, foggy: running. Something like pride, although it wasn't, he didn't feel anything like that after Pierce broke him down to spare parts; just the knowledge that he'd succeeded at the thing they told him to do. And then fear. He has a moment of timeline confusion. If he shot the man who shot Pierce, then—

“He survived,” she says, reading whatever's on his face. “Your target.”

The Soldier groans. He covers his face with his hand and swats himself with his stump when his other arm tries to follow suit. “No wonder they were going to decommission me. Was there anything on that mission I _didn't_ fuck up?” Thank god, he thinks privately: thank god, thank god, that's one less death on his hands, thank god he was already defective when they sent him out one last time.

“Well, you weren't really...” Is she trying to make him feel better? She's looking down at the manual, tapping her nails on a page. “You weren't _designed_ for what they made you do. Zola didn't intend for you to be an operative. That's what you meant, isn't it? But they made you do it anyway. Because they could.”

“Yes,” he says wearily.

She's quiet for a long time. And then she says: “I might know a thing or two about that.”

He waits. The coffee maker finishes gurgling in the meanwhile, and he turns to find a mug.

“The Red Room,” she says, as soon as he takes his eyes off her. “You won't—that's sort of a relief, you don't know the weight of—” She clears her throat. “We were child soldiers. They were trying things like hypnosis, implanted memories—conditioning. Overkill, really. They made us too—” She cuts herself off abruptly. “You're not what I expected.”

“Join the club,” the Soldier says, handing her the cup of coffee she didn't ask for. She takes a sip, and another, regarding him over the edge of her mug even though it must be burning her mouth. He considers telling her it's rude to stare, but she's a grown woman and he thinks she knows, so he doesn't react. She must be another of what Barton called Rogers's brainwashed idiots, though she's no idiot, and neither is Barton. Shit, Rogers _does_ collect them.

“Was it hard,” she says, “Building a person from scratch?”

“Compared to what?” he says. He doesn't want to satisfy her by saying: _I've had practice_. Or: _yes, it was the hardest thing I've ever done, and sometimes I wish I never had_. She wants something particular out of him and he can't guess what. She's come up in a different way; he can't read her. She puts her coffee down on the stove-top and leans forward.

“Let's go for a walk,” she says.

 

☙

 

Her name, it turns out, is Natasha. (“Natalia Alianovna Romanova. My friends call me Nat.” Letting him decide how formal he wants to be.) She puts one of her little hands between his shoulder-blades as they go down the stairs, ready, he supposes, to grab the back of his jacket if he looks like he's about to trip. It's an unasked-for kindness he isn't sure how to interpret. Wilson's behavior implied that touching between strangers without permission is improper, but Romanova seems to throw propriety out the window. Intentional brashness, or a coping mechanism? Her body language is silent on the matter.

After a block, though, the Soldier can tell that she's angry about something.

“What is it?” he asks, once they're through the crosswalk.

“You,” she says, crossing her arms now that he's caught her out. “I don't like this. You were beautiful.”

He's taken aback. He knows what she means: not that she found him physically attractive, rather that he was strong, that he was graceful, that he was highly skilled, but— “I was an assassin.”

“Death can be beautiful,” Romanova says.

“ _Killing_ is always ugly,” the Soldier says. That honest little smirk on her face, like he's passed a test. “And if I was—beautiful,” he adds, stumbling over a word he's not sure he's ever said aloud, certainly never about himself, “Then it was because they were covering up all the things that would've made me...not. It was—” He frowns, unsure if he's using it right. “Lipstick on a pig?”

She snorts. Amusement or derision, he can't tell. He shifts suddenly to the left, trying to avoid a large off-leash dog with no respect for personal space, and his empty sleeve falls out of his jacket pocket. Romanova tucks it back in, and then slips her hand lightly over the place where his elbow should be. It feels strange, like she's phasing through the limb he knows isn't really there. It's an elegant way to match his pace more exactly, but he thinks they must make for an odd-looking couple, taking up half of the sidewalk at his snail's pace.

“Is Steve good to you?” she asks, after signaling that he should turn the corner.

“Sure,” the Soldier says. “I'd be in a bad way if it wasn't for him and Wilson.”

She elbows him without letting go of his sleeve. It almost hurts, so he swats at her warningly with the cane. “No,” she says. “You know what I _mean_. Is he treating you right?”

The Soldier can't help laughing. He ignores her glare. “You asking if he's getting a return on his investment? Jesus, sweetheart, he'd break me in half.”

Romanova's eyebrows hit the roof. “There's a picture. But seriously—”

“I have no complaints about Rogers,” the Soldier lies. Well—it's not exactly a lie, is it? He doesn't have any complaints about _Rogers_ , not when he really gets down to it, not when he thinks about how generous Rogers has been despite everything. Can he really blame Rogers for mourning, for missing the guy whose skin the Soldier's wearing? Rogers doesn't know any better. The Soldier thinks about those two little boys, the ones in the old photograph, and wonders if he shouldn't try a little harder to be patient, for their sake. Even if the thought does make him feel sick.

“Well, good,” Romanova says, after some consideration. “I'd hate to have to kick his ass.”

“Okay,” the Soldier says, stopping dead. Romanova keeps walking for a step, pulling his sleeve out of his pocket. He puts the cane between them when she tries to fix it. “Okay, hold up, stop. Make me understand this. Rogers is concerned about me because I'm—” He swallows nausea. “—his friend. But Wilson, Barton, you—I don't get it. Why do you _care_?”

“What did you feel after Philadelphia?” she asks, wary of pedestrians, knowing he'll fill in the blanks: _when you killed those agents_. Before he can respond: “Did you feel angry?”

“Of course I did,” he says.

“Me too,” she says. “I feel angry because I hoped I'd never have to meet another person like me. I feel angry when I think about HYDRA taking someone who was by all accounts a very good man, and forcing him to do terrible things any number of well-trained operatives could have done instead. I feel angry because they could have used their own people and didn't. I feel angry because they turned a human being into a science experiment. I feel better when I think about them suffering. And when I think about the people they hurt _not_ suffering.”

The Soldier blows out a long, slow breath through his mouth.

When the sidewalk is clear for fifteen feet on either side of them, he says, “I killed a civilian in Philly.” Romanova's gaze comes up sharp. “He beat and raped a little girl. I did it for heroin.” He looks at the ground when something changes behind her eyes; too patient, too understanding. “I don't want you thinking the only bad things I ever did were for them.”

“You killed people in the war,” she says, and puts her hands up in surrender when he opens his mouth to object. “I know you don't remember. I won't tell you it doesn't matter. You have to choose what matters for yourself. And whatever meaning you choose to give it, you have to keep in mind that you chose that mission—bartered services for it. Nobody forced you. That doesn't make it inconsequential, but it does make it different. And, yes, _that_ matters.”

“Does it, though?” he asks tiredly. He lets her tuck his sleeve into his pocket when she comes forward, this time, and obediently follows her lead when she starts walking. When there's another gap in pedestrians, the Soldier says, “I still killed him. There's still people out there who miss him. He's—gone.”

“I was Red Room, and then after I defected, I spent nine years performing wetwork for an organization I only recently found out was compromised,” Romanova says. “I'll never know how many good people died because of me, or how many people got hurt on the peripheral. And the thing is—I don't want to know. Because there's nothing I can do. Maybe I could give some closure, but it doesn't make people any less dead. There's a point—” She sucks in a breath that sounds like it hurts. “There's a point where you have to let go. Where you have to acknowledge that you did it, and it's done, and you can't wipe it out of your ledger, it's out of your hands, and the most productive thing you can do is make sure it never happens again. Because the only alternatives are going crazy or going to jail, and we can do more good if we don't.”

“Why do we get a pass, though?” the Soldier demands. “Why—” He looks up pointedly at the row houses they're passing. “Why does a regular person go to jail and we get to choose? What's so special about us?”

“I don't know,” she says. “Luck. Circumstance. Probably nothing. Maybe we're the warning.”

“I don't like any of those answers,” he says.

“Neither do I,” says Romanova.

 

☙

 

She leaves him to tackle the staircase while she buys food at the café next door. Climbing the stairs makes him feel more tired than usual, but he's less sore, less unbalanced. The walk did something to him—reconnected his muscles to his brain, or reminded them of their function, maybe, and he wants to sleep for a week, but under the skin he feels much more solid. Maybe Wilson was right: maybe staying in the apartment all day, even if he doesn't lay in bed, isn't good for him. Maybe he needs to get out and move.

Romanova comes back with chicken wrapped in flat bread and something wrapped in leaves, and, from god knows where, a bouquet of flowers in a large glass jar. The petals are still damp when she gives them to him, fresh from some florist's cooler, and he examines them gently while she starts to eat. Her meal makes the whole apartment smell like a Greek market, and makes him miss real food for the first time since the tube went in. It's been long enough since nutrition resulted in pain that his body's begun to forget. Romanova gives him a piece of grape leaf to hold in his mouth, and then a piece of chicken. The taste is so rich that he has to take both of them out after a few seconds, a feeling in his throat like a cousin to nausea, his mouth flooding with saliva—too much, too soon.

She doesn't know the names of all the flowers, but she tells the Soldier some of them when he touches their stems. _Dalhia._ _Rose_ —he knows that one. _Baby's breath. Calla lily_. “Those are my favorites,” she says. “They're not callas or lilies, and the whole plant is poisonous. And there was this woman painter who was famous for them. Everybody thinks her paintings have some naughty meaning, that she was actually painting genitalia, but she always said she wasn't.” Romanova smiles and taps the undercurl of a petal. “They're double-agents. What do you like?”

“I don't know,” he says, and remembers Murray's wildflowers. “Poppies, I guess. There were fields of—” He thinks about them coming back in the spring unobserved, Murray dead and the staff gone and the Soldier—away, and feels inexplicably sad. It's stupid; they were blooming on the island before he was made, and they've been blooming for twenty years in his absence, and they'll keep doing it, on and on, with or without anyone there to see them, but it snags him in the chest all the same.

“I like poppies,” Romanova says, as if he hadn't stopped. “Do you know what they mean? In a bouquet?”

He shakes his head.

“Remembrance,” she says.

“Fuck off,” he says, “ _Really_?” But he's laughing.

She doesn't dispense wisdom at the door like Barton did, but she does come up on her toes and plant a kiss on his cheek. He lets her, bewildered, and finds himself saying, “I'm sorry I hurt you.” Even though he didn't feel sorry, a moment ago; he felt sorry like he would for a person injured in a car accident, or a natural disaster, something that had no connection to him, no meaning. She'll wear two of his scars for her whole life, he realizes. He's under her skin. No wonder she wanted to look him in the eyes.

“I'll take it as a compliment,” she says. That twisted little smirk morphing into a grin. “Put it on a tee-shirt. 'I survived the Winter Soldier and all I got was eight months of physio.' ”

“Cute,” he says, “Make me one too,” and shuts the door. He can hear her laughing on the other side.

After the Soldier hears the building door shut—loudly; he appreciates the courtesy—his phone pings from the island. The text message comes from Unknown and says: _I don't like to count my etc., but I think Steve will be home tonight. Go take a nap, you look like death. :)_

“Thanks,” he tells his phone, and decides not to wonder how she got his number.

He'd half-expected that locking the door and coming back into an empty apartment would ratchet his panic back up to critical levels, but standing just inside the kitchen, he can see Barton's forgotten dart board at the end of the hall, and Romanova's discarded foil wrapper on the island, and the flowers. The physical reminders that real people have been in the space recently seems to comfort the panicky lizard-parts of his brain. It's all so...normal, or what he's come to understand is normal. Food and flowers and the faint smell of dog still lingering on the sofa. It feels lived-in.

 _He_ could make it feel lived-in, he realizes, startled. He does live here, doesn't he? Even if he's just borrowing a room from Rogers? Surely he could get new flowers when these ones die. God knows where or how a person finds things to put on walls, but he could do that. He could have music on the record player when Rogers comes home. Maybe Rogers is just waiting for something, maybe he doesn't want to alter some unspoken routine, maybe he needs someone to snap him out of whatever groove he's worn himself into. It would be nice, wouldn't it? It's a thing people do for each other, he's pretty sure. He reaches for his phone to text someone for advice. Surely Wilson or Romanova would—

Heavy boots on the stairs.

It's too early for Rogers. The third-floor residents are soft-footed. More than one, less than five—what's become of him, that he can't tell how many there are, how tall they are, where they fucking trained? This is his reward, the price of letting his guard down. This is the price of a few hours of happiness. The price of not worrying. If it wasn't the trackers then it was the walk, he realizes, rising from the couch and cracking his back, his neck, the awkward place between his shoulderblades that's always stiff as a board. It was probably the walk. They'd've had the place monitored, somehow, and maybe he'd scraped by lucky when he went out to sit on the steps, that crisp evening, but walking with Romanova with his face uncovered and all his broken edges on display...

Motion in the hall, quieter. Glory be, they can be stealthy after all.

The Soldier shrugs off the Joey-pack, pressing pause and lifting his shirt to unhook the tube, capping the port, setting the pack silently on the floor. He wishes he had medical tape so he could protect the port, but he doesn't, so he tucks his shirt under his waistband as he moves into position, around the corner from the door, his left side shielded. Unsanitary, stupid; he'll have to disinfect everything later. He spins the cane in his hand, settling his grasp near the base, tilting his wrist and finding the balance, the weight of it under his fingers. His phantom hand spasms around nothing but air.

The front door clicks open.

The Soldier bares his teeth.


	6. ghosts have warm hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know this is a non-smoking building, right,” Steve says, not really asking.

The first thing Steve smells is the flowers.

He flicks the lights on and puts his bags on the floor of the closet, shield in one, uniform in the other, both in serious need of a wash but nothing that won't keep until morning. While he bends to unlace his shoes, he puzzles it out. He can't see Bucky going down to Soo-jin's shop and charming her out of them, partially because Soo-jin is unimpressed by men in general and white men in particular, and primarily because Bucky refuses to take any of Steve's money, which—Steve's not going to think too hard about, really, because Steve's not good at delicate conversations, and convincing a house-bound trauma victim to take discretionary funds _just in case_ probably isn't going to end all that well. He'd had enough trouble getting Bucky to accept a smartphone without resorting to the “well, you had no problem re-appropriating that laptop I was never gonna use” card.

So, the flowers: Natasha, then. Which would explain the cryptic text message he'd received a few hours ago that said: _Penny and a sugar cube. For future reference, he likes poppies_. Followed by a winking emoji, because Nat enjoys messing with him. He resolves not to analyze it until he's had a shower at the very least, or maybe never. It's a pretty arrangement, he discovers—spring colors in a big mason jar, perfect for cheering somebody up on a dull day. He wonders whether he or Bucky was the intended recipient of the sentiment in question, and concludes it's probably Bucky, sadly, because Nat knows that clearing a major HYDRA base is all the good cheer Steve needs to keep his chin up for a week. God knows Bucky's got enough to be sad about these days. Steve wishes there was anything, _anything_ he could do to make things easier, but Sam had been very clear: you can be there to help him up, but you can't walk for him.

In the kitchen, Steve is hit with a wave of garlic and lemon and starch, which is stronger evidence for Nat and her souvlaki addiction. It's definitely not from Clint, because to everybody's bewilderment, for a guy that has a reputation for eating pretty much anything, Clint hates tzatziki with a passion bordering on maniacal, and he'd probably parkour half a mile out of his way if it meant _not_ eating at Zorba's. Steve's stomach growls in Pavlovian response, and he's turning towards the pantry when he sees one thing and smells another in the same breath.

Sight first: Bucky's cane sticking out of the wall by the fridge, at approximately shoulder height, the handle driven entirely into the plaster by a swing with some serious anger behind it. The bottom third is bent, crumpled beyond repair.

Smell second: and he doesn't panic, just sighs, because this is a habit he remembers all too well from aborted panic attacks circa 1943.

Steve follows the smell to Bucky, who's sitting against the wall in the pitch-black hallway, oddly crumpled, as if he started off leaning and just slipped all the way down.

“You know this is a non-smoking building, right,” Steve says, not really asking. Bucky breathes out through his nose, dragonesque, and rests his smoke-wreathed hand on his knee. He turns to look at Steve, and Steve can't help it; barks: “Shit!” because there's just enough light from the kitchen to see that other side of Bucky's face is a sheet of blood, matting his loose hair into a tacky snarl at his temple. Steve starts forward, stops himself. Tries to make his face look less horrified than it probably does. Bucky, on the other hand, wears one of his unreadable expressions.

“HYDRA,” Bucky says, putting Steve out of his misery. “Two agents. Stowed them in the bathtub. The living room carpet is a write-off. Sorry.” It all comes out slurred, in the gravelly rasp Steve is still trying to get used to, and he spends a few moments wondering about concussion before he sees the slight asymmetry of Bucky's jaw. Broken, then, and if Bucky's healing factor is anything like his, less than an hour ago. He tries not to worry about what impact cryo-induced osteoarthritis might have on Bucky's recovery time; tries to remind himself that Bucky'd come back with no evidence of the beating Steve had given him on the helicarrier. Worse comes to worse, they'll call Sousa, because there's no way in heaven nor earth that he'll consider dragging Bucky to the hospital. He knows from experience how well that'll go over if Bucky's in the place Steve thinks he is. '43 was...an educational year.

“Dammit,” Steve says.

“Main door's not compromised,” Bucky continues insistently, like Steve cares about anything other than Bucky _being okay_. “I think they jimmied the first floor—”

Steve flops down next to Bucky, banging his shoulder on the wall. He steals Bucky's cigarette right out of his hand. When he hands it back, a minute later, Bucky is watching him with a look of obvious amusement. Steve says, “What?”

“Nothing. You just reminded me of someone.” Bucky takes a drag with a rapturous lift of his brows. Eyes closed, he says, “Captain America smokes? Stop the presses.”

“ 'Course. Everybody did. We scrounged for them during the war, and I chain-smoked Elliotts before that. They were supposed to be good for asthma.” Steve wrinkles his nose. “They were probably killing me, now I think about it. Hey, if you—I mean, I don't know what's good these days, but I can pick some up if you want.”

“Nah.” Bucky grins, awful and lopsided, blood in his teeth. “Never smoked a cigarette I didn't kite off a dead guy. Let's not tempt fate.”

He's so very _Bucky_ all of a sudden that Steve's throat constricts, and he has to look away.

After the silence has dragged on for a while, there's a quiet grinding noise and then a sound like a ruler being cracked across a desk. Bucky grunts; pain or surprise or both. Steve realizes he might be the only person around who knows what it feels like when bones snap back together under the skin. Sharp and queasy and somehow satisfying.

“We're getting ash all over the floor,” Bucky says, working his jaw, when Steve steals the cigarette again.

“Fuck the floor,” Steve says tiredly. “Can't be worse than the rest. They'll have to gut this place—I put that carpet over the bloodstains last year. Wouldn't come out of the hardwood.”

“Freaks of science are hard on décor,” Bucky says, so blandly mournful that Steve has to laugh, a little hysterically, dragging his free hand down his face. He tilts his head back and watches the smoke curl up to the ceiling, mentally adding plaster to his shopping list. At the rate his presence is damaging it, he might as well buy the building. He could. God, there's an uncomfortable thought.

Speaking of uncomfortable thoughts.

“They dead?” Steve asks. “The guys in the bathtub.”

Bucky makes a listless noise. “One was. Probably both by now.”

Turns out Bucky's half right. The one is definitely dead, but the second is still breathing. Steve pulls the living agent off the corpse and lays him flat on the bathroom tile, ignoring the guy's floppy broken leg and the tacky blood down the front of his uniform. The jostling wakes him up, and he makes a noise like a creaky hinge. He's middle-aged, maybe; strawberry blond with a spattering of gray, fine-boned, handsome—or might be, if he wasn't in such a state. Steve doesn't recognize him from Rumlow's STRIKE team, but he's learned more than he ever wanted to know about just how many STRIKE teams Pierce was bankrolling under the table, three times as many off the books as on, running the missions they couldn't pass off as legitimate through SHIELD. The guy is probably from one of the fringe groups cut off from the main body, no intel on active bases to retreat to, circling the drain, just like the ones who came after Bucky in Philly.

Bucky, meanwhile, is kneeling down carefully, using the wall as leverage, like he hurts. That's not new, Steve's _seen_ what's in the painkillers Bucky injects into his g-tube twice a day, but he's either been better lately or gotten better at hiding it, so this is him not caring if Steve sees, or—more likely—one of the agents got him pretty good before they went down. Steve's caught in a waking nightmare of Bucky fighting hand-to-hand, one-armed, in pain, _alone_. If Steve hadn't spent so much time kibitzing with Tony—

Bucky nudges the guy's ribs with one knee, and his eyes flash open. Steve's about to bark a warning when, madly, Bucky smiles. It's crooked and fond and the spitting image of the expression Bucky used to turn on newborn kittens and his baby sisters, and Steve just about loses it right there, seeing him give the full wattage to a half-dead HYDRA agent on Steve's bathroom floor.

“Well, I'll be,” Bucky says softly. “Looks like it's not your day, kid. Or your year. Guess you weren't ever bothered enough to quit, huh?”

“Acceptable losses,” the agent wheezes. “Shoulda known. Told 'em.”

“Told them what?”

“Two wasn't gonna be enough.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve watches, appalled, as Bucky pats the man's shoulder. “They never thought much of me, did they? I stole your cigarettes. Hope you don't mind.”

The agent grunts a laugh, then groans. “Consider it—fuck. Payback for Bosnia.”

Bucky leans hard on the agent's shoulder, and he gives a sharper groan. His collarbone must be broken, Steve thinks. Maybe half the bones in his torso; he hasn't moved his arms since he woke up, or done much besides breathe. Bucky says, low and even, “Anything else I'm supposed to _consider_ about Bosnia?”

“If you're gonna, do it,” the agent says through his teeth. His pupils are pinpricks. “Or do you not shit where you eat?”

“Can't eat anymore, sweetheart,” Bucky says. He twists to look up at Steve, standing in the doorway like a dolt. “Rogers, would you mind giving us a minute alone?”

Steve salutes and gets the hell out.

In the kitchen, he crosses his arms over the sink and rests his forehead on the cool metal, trying not to listen to whatever's going down in the bathroom. Bucky saves him from having to try; there's a low murmuring, and then the click of the door being shut, and the high-pitched hum of the fan starting up. Steve's heard more with less, but if he just so happens to have an urge to wash his hands with the water running for, say, five minutes...

In the end, it's not necessary. He stands in the kitchen and waits and doesn't hear a damn thing, just looks at the flowers and thinks of little blessings, hoping to god that Bucky's doing something he needs and not something he'll regret. Steve had more or less had to let nature take its course in the war, too—Bucky hadn't taken kindly to being pulled off HYDRA scientists before he was done with them. Hadn't outright disobeyed orders and killed any of them, but, hell, Steve's sure a few of them had wished for it, by the time they'd been dubiously patched up and turned over to Peg for interrogation, Bucky sometimes looming in the corner of the room like something out of the silents, sheet-pale and three days late for a shave and smelling like the corpses they were always hauling out of those labs.

God help him, but he doesn't know what to do.

Sometimes Steve feels older than he is, older than everybody around him, old as the _dirt_ , but right now he feels like a knock-kneed little kid looking around for an adult to take his hand and show him the right way of things. For _Bucky_ to show him the right way of things. Not that Bucky was some angelic genius, but he always seemed to have a clearer vision of the rules of the world, where to step and how to wander off the path safely, or was at least good at faking it. So much of Bucky was instinctive, or appeared to be, things Steve supposes he must have learned from his indomitable mother—Winnie'd been made of iron, and the world more often as not bent around _her—_ and it kills him that they left that expert easiness alone when they tore everything else out of Bucky. It's a testament to how little Bucky really does remember Steve right now, because Bucky had always dropped that pretense before, when they were alone together; had transfigurated before Steve's eyes into the lovable jerk Steve had grown up beside, gangly and awkward and not always sure of himself, asking Steve for advice like Steve wasn't the one out of the two of them perpetually wearing his bad idea pants. He wishes—

The fan shuts off down the hall.

There's enough time between that and Bucky's actual appearance in the kitchen for Steve to pull himself together, but turns out not to be necessary; Bucky climbs jerkily onto the nearest barstool, drops his arm between his knees, and puts his head down on the island without even glancing at Steve. His forehead is still bleeding sluggishly, smearing onto the tabletop. Steve would've stopped bleeding by now, but Bucky's poor worn-out body is lagging behind, prioritizing function over form. In for a penny, Steve thinks, and grabs a barstool of his own, getting both of his feet up on it and wrapping his arms around his calves. He barely fits in this configuration, but it makes him feel momentarily small. It's comforting.

“So,” Steve says.

“So,” Bucky echoes, muffled. After a moment he turns his head without lifting it and looks at Steve.

“Missed a spot, there, pal,” Steve says, pointing at his own face. Bucky raises one eyebrow artfully. It's positively ghoulish with the amount of gore on Bucky's face, all the more awful for being familiar. The wince afterward is less familiar, the strain around Bucky's eyes as he brings his limp hand to his belly, cradling without pressing down. “Oh, hell,” Steve realizes: “Where's Joe? They didn't—” But there's no telltale bloodstain on Bucky's gray shirt, so they didn't rip the tube out of Bucky's stomach, thank god; on the list of things Steve never wants to deal with again, it's Bucky laid out for surgery on the dining room table, slack-limbed and barely breathing and covered in sweat, knocked out past Pluto so Sousa could get the endoscope down his throat. Steve might burn that table, one of these days.

Bucky's mouth contorts oddly and it takes Steve a second to realize he's failing to suppress a smile. “You named my feeding machine?”

Steve shrugs helplessly and then tries to bat it back. “You named your _rifle_ , I was just trying to carry on the tradition.”

“Sure,” Bucky says. He's about to say something else, but he clenches his teeth instead, turning his forehead on the table as some interior pain hits him; Steve can see the roll of it under his skin, the movement of his spine. “S'fine,” he grits out when it passes, catching Steve watching him. “It's just—shit knitting back together.”

“Internal bleeding?”

“Probably,” Bucky says, sounding like he couldn't care less. “It'll stop.”

“Yeah, but it'll go faster if you've got fuel,” Steve points out, and searches until he finds the Joey, kicked unceremoniously between the sofa and the wall, trailing its tube like viscera. He puts it on the island, ready to fix everything himself, but Bucky straightens from his pained curl and gestures: _here_. Steve brings all his supplies over, plus a new tube, and watches Bucky go through the routine. It's like clockwork, now that Bucky's done it so often, now he's figured out workarounds, holding things between his knees and frequently using his mouth as an auxiliary hand. He used to do that with ammunition, sometimes, no matter how often he got yelled at; sometimes he'd capitulate and put a round behind his ear instead, only to stick the thing in his mouth like a cigar and pretend to chew on it once authority turned its broad back.

Case in point: Bucky puts an alcohol gel packet between his teeth until he needs to tear it open, using his stump to rub it onto his hand. And then he says, out of the blue, as if Steve had asked: “I didn't kill him. Just knocked him out.”

“Oh,” Steve says, half relieved, half worried. “Is he going to...wake up anytime soon?”

“No idea.” Bucky holds up the tube and stares at it, practically cross-eyed, while it primes. “I'm not at my best, Rogers, in case you hadn't fucking noticed.” The edge of his lip comes up. Unconsciously, Steve suspects; it's almost a snarl. Lower: “Didn't mean to kill the other one.”

There's nothing Steve can say to that, so he doesn't; just holds what Bucky needs him to hold. When Bucky's finished hooking everything up and turning the machine on, he puts his head back down on the table, making a soft hurting sound. It tugs under Steve's breastbone like a bullet, and it's his mother's voice he hears in his head, murmuring low, _Well I can't make you quit but I can make you clean, so hold still, a scuigín_; and Bucky hasn't moved a muscle by the time Steve comes back with a couple of hand towels. He fills a bowl with almost-scalding water, drops the towels into it, and brings everything back to the island, dragging his barstool closer to Bucky with his foot.

“Let me see,” Steve says, and Bucky sits up like the whole world's piled on his spine.

“Gonna make it bleed again,” Bucky mumbles, his odd new precision slurring out into something more recognizable, but he lets Steve steady his chin and press a hot towel to the sticky side of his face without protest, just a little hiss that sounds more appreciative than disagreeable. Steve feels a little frission of relief. The whole time Bucky was sick, whenever Steve came within a foot of him, Bucky'd bitten down on these tight little flinches he probably thought Steve couldn't see. Like his skin was trying to shrink. Steve had felt hurt, briefly, until he'd started thinking more carefully about why someone might develop a phobia of human proximity, and then he'd sort of hated himself. He's been trying his best to keep his distance, ever since, but Bucky isn't flinching now.

“This broken?” Steve asks. He touches Bucky's cheekbone, his eye socket, the side of his forehead where it's split and mottled purple-red; presses gently when Bucky makes a non-committal noise. “Feels okay,” Steve says, and switches towels, trying to carefully soak off the blood that's matted big clumps of Bucky's hair to his face. When he checks in, Bucky's eyes are closed but not shut tight, the muscles of his face about as relaxed as they ever get these days, his hand curled loosely in his lap, which Steve'll take optimistically.

Bucky finally stops bleeding. Steve's wringing out the last round of red-tinged water and surveying his work when Bucky says, “He was all right.” A pause. “That—Agent Kidd. Wasn't as bad as most of them.”

“You knew him,” Steve guesses. “I mean, back when.”

“Youngest ever STRIKE member,” Bucky murmurs. He opens his eyes and shakes himself, like he's wading back up into the present. “Tried to help me escape in—1990. Year before Pierce took over.”

“You got caught?”

Bucky makes a disgusted noise. Steve thinks it's directed at him, for a moment, but the expression Bucky's wearing is all self-castigation. “Caught? I didn't _try_. Just about hauled him in by the ear for compromising opsec, actually. But, I thought—first mission was always hard. He came over straight from SHIELD, which was a stupid, risky move on Murray's part, pairing him up with me. I was surprised he didn't go full rogue.”

“I'm sure he was very loyal,” Steve says, and doesn't keep as much bitterness out of his voice as he intended.

“Oh, I don't know,” Bucky says. Exhaustion makes his voice deeper than usual. “Sometimes, after Pierce, I'd catch him looking—torn. I guess. Over what they were doing to me. Now, I get the sense he liked it and hated the fact that he liked it, but then, I figured it was just backwash from...” Bucky trails off; stills. “Was he queer? Barnes?”

Steve feels like he's been hit with a baseball bat.

Bucky's continued and worrisome use of the third person aside—

Yes, Steve thinks. No. It's not a question he's equipped to answer. We didn't have orientations, he wants to protest: we had raids. We had slurs. Sometimes you took them for your own and sometimes you didn't. Sometimes you made it your whole life and sometimes you pretended you had nothing to do with it, because the words weren't wrong but they weren't _right_ , either; they just weren't what you wanted to say. The silent kind of saying, like the things you said by the way you wore your hair, your suits. The things people thought they knew about you just from looking. Say the word, and you found yourself locked in a crate of expectations: airless, no room to grow. No community's ever kind to folks who don't fit into any of the boxes. _Was he queer? Barnes?_ Yes. No. It's not his place to say.

For a comprehensive lack of anything better, Steve says, “I don't know.”

“Now, why would they have programmed that in,” Bucky says, soft and a little wonderingly. “It doesn't serve any tactical purpose, it's just recreational. Not to mention—”

“Bucky,” Steve says slowly, coming up sideways to something he doesn't want to think about, let alone ask: “Buck, did anybody ever...” He can't finish.

Bucky shrugs. “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

Rogers's face does a remarkable thing. The Soldier has seen anger turn into fear, but never anger into this awful melted mixture of horror and dismay and concern, and then, like a flash, to anger again. Rogers strikes the table with his fist and spins away, snarling, almost upsetting the bowl of bloody water. The Soldier sits back, off-balance, out of breath. Then, too high and a little cracked, he laughs. Rogers turns back with incredulous, offended eyes.

“They tortured me,” the Soldier manages, half-hysterical: “They fried my brain and cut me up and made me kill people, and _that's_ what gets your dander up? Some asshole putting his hand where it didn't belong?”

“I hate everything that happened to you!” Rogers shouts. “Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by one more violation on top of everything else, but— _fuck_.” Rogers presses his fingers into his eyes and makes a visible effort to calm down. “I'm sorry. I overreacted, I'm sorry.”

“It's fine,” the Soldier says, fighting another bubble of laughter. Rogers's offense is almost charming. Chivalrous, old-fashioned. Well, it would be, the Soldier thinks—it's Rogers. “If it helps, nobody succeeded. Not that I can remember, anyway.”

“It does, a little,” Rogers says quietly. “It's stupid—they tortured you for decades and here I am grateful they didn't—”

“It's fine,” the Soldier says again, and this time he does laugh. “They never waterboarded me, so we can add that to the list.”

“Short list,” Rogers says, looking like he's fighting some inappropriate giggles of his own. Then, sobering rapidly, eyebrows lifting, he says, “Oh, did you—you and that agent—”

“Not really,” the Soldier says, and instantly regrets the qualifier when Rogers fails to suppress a wince. “I didn't—there was no _we_ , nothing happened.” He looks down at his hand; thinks, well, it'll make Rogers either happy or angry: “I had a boyfriend for a few weeks in Philadelphia, though. It was nice.”

“That's good,” Rogers says carefully. “I mean, I'm sorry about—but—I'm glad. That it was good.” It's awkward, but it's a very sincere awkwardness, and the Soldier tries to force some of the tension out of his shoulders. Rogers adds, more confident: “I'll have to get somebody in to take them,” and—boom, there's the panic, like it never left.

“Somebody who isn't going to take me away, hopefully,” the Soldier says, steadier than he feels.

“No!” Rogers holds up his hands. “No, no one's going to—we'll tell them it was me. Nobody's going to believe—I mean, no offense.”

“No, no, I know what I look like.” The Soldier gestures at Rogers. “Go on, then.”

“I just meant you don't look anything like the Winter Soldier, that's all,” Rogers says, pulling out his phone, which is kind of him, and probably true. “But they won't ask. I'll ring Nat, she'll smooth everything over.”

Romanova and a tall brunette woman arrive within minutes of Rogers hanging up the phone, accompanied by four burly young agents carrying stretchers. None of the agents, or the woman, so much as glance at the Soldier while Rogers takes them down the hall: mission ready, narrow focus. Romanova splits off early and comes to stand between the Soldier's knees, taking his face in her hands and turning it one way, then the other.

“You'll keep your good looks,” she deadpans, and he tries to smile for her. She spins his barstool away from her so he doesn't have to, and hops up onto the island behind him, directing his posture, tilting his head back. Her hands in his damp hair, combing it away from his face. It takes him longer than it should to realize she's braiding it; from the front, in gathered sections, like Seven used to do for the youngest girls. He hardly has enough hair for it to matter, he almost protests, but it's pleasant to be fussed over by someone who isn't Rogers, so he lets her be. When she's finished, she ties it off with an elastic and rests her hands on his shoulders. He stifles a groan when she digs her thumbs in exactly where he needs it, between the muscles where his shoulder meets his neck.

“You have more knots in here than a rug,” she says, probing around. “I'd give you the number of my massage therapist if I didn't think you'd throw it out. How badly did they hurt you?”

“I'm fine now,” he says. Her thumbs dig in wickedly. “Fuck, fuck, _okay_. Broken ribs. Broken jaw. Concussion. Abdominal damage, don't know the extent. Guess I'll find out later if I piss blood. One of them just about tore my fucking ear off, that's annoying me more than the rest of it.”

“Walk it off,” Romanova says. Before he can snarl at her, she adds, “That's something Steve says sometimes on missions—shorthand. He means: if you still have your legs, you're doing all right.”

“Don't have to tell me twice, sweetheart,” the Soldier mutters.

One of the stretchers moves rapidly through the hallway before it disappears behind the divider, out of sight if not out of hearing for some moments; Agent Kidd rattles loudly when he breathes. He'll survive, but it'll be a long recovery, the Soldier thinks, therapy and sleepless nights and bones that'll tell the weather better than the radio, deep down in whatever spartan accommodations SHIELD—or whoever Romanova and Rogers work for now—decide to provide. It's not any kind of justice, but he'll take it, since it's there. Given, after all, that the alternative was being dragged back to the chair.

The second stretcher has a sheet over it, and moves much slower through the hall.

“It could have been worse,” Romanova murmurs in his ear.

“Yeah,” the Soldier says. Genuinely curious: “Does that really comfort people? Regular people?”

“I suppose,” Romanova says. “I've never asked,” and Rogers appears in the kitchen, breathing deeply and looking a little shell-shocked. His expression softens when he sees the Soldier, Romanova's hands on the sides of his neck, her thumbs tucked into the notch at the base of his skull, fingers on the hinge of his jaw. “Just testing the merchandise,” she says flatly, and Rogers unwinds completely, tension sloughing off of him as he climbs up onto the other barstool, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hands. The Soldier will have to remember that: jokes take Rogers out of himself like someone's thrown a switch. Or maybe it's just Romanova's brand of dry humor.

“Criminy,” Rogers says, leaning back. Romanova barks: “Language!” and Rogers laughs, strangled; says, “Let's not do that again.”

“I underestimated them,” Romanova says. “It won't happen again. We'll crack down on security, cut the response time on unauthorized entry to—three minutes. I can make it two if Stark gets me those cameras I asked for, more plainclothes agents, set up somebody next door—”

“I don't want to live in a _nanny state_ ,” Rogers says, and the Soldier silently concurs. The more warm bodies, the more likely something is to go catastrophically wrong in the chain of command. Romanova's hands go tense and then soft against his neck; she sweeps them back down to his shoulders and digs in with what feels like her knuckles. Rogers adds, “Don't bleed your folks, Nat. The cameras are fine. I'll get Tony on the horn and annoy him into submission if you think it'll make a difference.”

“Fine,” Romanova agrees, “But both of you get a panic button on your phones, no arguing.”

“Okay,” the Soldier says, and Rogers says, “Only if I can't butt-dial it.”

“Would I do that to you?” she asks.

Rogers just looks at her.

“Well, _I_ don't care how much you wheedle,” the tall woman says, sweeping into the kitchen and opening the fridge like she owns the place, “You're getting agents on the perimeter and the roof overnight, so you'll have to check in and out if you get a 3am mozzarella stick craving. Steve, what the fuck, when did you become a beer snob?”

“Don't look at me, Tony sent those courier,” Rogers says. “I didn't have the heart to tell him I don't drink. Anyway, one night is fine. Thanks, Hill.”

“You can thank me by not getting shot at ass-o-clock in the morning,” Hill replies, unmoved. She shuts the fridge with her hip and opens two beer bottles on the edge of the counter, handing one to Romanova, who takes a long drink and then rests the cold base against the Soldier's aching forehead. He sighs and closes his eyes. Hill's voice, close, and then further away: “God, this is such a mess, I thought the Eastern Seaboard was _clear_. How many rats are still crawling around out there?”

“Hundreds,” the Soldier says. When he opens his eyes, Hill's jaw is clenched. “Maybe more. They'll be running independently or on outdated orders until somebody rounds them up. Kidd implied what's left of his team are operating out of an unofficial cell in Boston—I couldn't get coordinates out of him.”

Hill taps her chin with the mouth of the bottle. “Will they orbit around bases?”

“Not if Rogers keeps emptying them.”

“We're not sure of the numbers,” Romanova says, at the same time Hill says, “If I showed you a map, could you point them out?”

“I could point out _old_ ones,” he hedges. “No guarantee they're still active. There's—” He hesitates. It feels like tearing out an organ when he offers it up: “There's an abandoned base off the coast of Maine, on an island. East of Portland. It's been empty for a long time, but it might have something you can use.”

Hill is typing furiously on her phone before he's finished. “Base—Portland—shit, seriously? Right, okay, I'm getting you a map and a set of cleared locations, and—”

“Tomorrow,” Rogers says, shrugging when everyone looks at him, lifting his hands. “Another twelve hours won't set back progress, and we could all use some sleep. No offense, Buck, but you look like you've been hit by a semi.”

Hill sighs unhappily, but slides her phone back into her pocket all the same. “Fine. Romanoff, I expect you'll want to stay overnight—”

“Yes.”

“—and Rogers, you're his legal guardian—”

“Uh,” says Rogers.

“—so you make the calls, but I want debrief from you and locations from him within twenty-four hours.” Hill raises her eyebrows and her beer at the same time. When she lowers both: “That doable?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Rogers says, sounding only a little belligerent. Hill looks, for a moment, like she's going to fight him on it, and then she knocks back the rest of her beer instead.

After Hill and her agents have swept the premises, after Romanova and Rogers have cleaned up as much as they can, after all the lights have been turned out, the Soldier lays board-stiff on his bed, unable to sleep. He jerks awake over and over, weaving in and out of a state that isn't quite hallucinating and isn't quite dreaming, his brain forcing him to watch cut-up clips of the whole clusterfuck like it hadn't been bad enough the first time. Like he's supposed to be learning from his mistakes, or something; like there's anything to learn _from_. He tried to find the bullet casing earlier, to have something familiar in his hands, and couldn't. It must've fallen out of his pocket and been picked up by an agent as evidence. He stares out his doorway to the living room, where the sofa Romanova is sleeping on—or pretending to sleep on—is an inscrutable black wedge blocking his view to the window beyond.

 _Spring was damp as autumn; my feet on the ordinary street walked in water-meadows_ , he recites, and he doesn't forget a single word, but it's no use. Poetry can't stop his body twitching further and further from sleep.

0314, the clock says when he gives up.

Romanova doesn't stir when he walks cautiously past the sofa, wrapped in two blankets and all too aware of the cane's absence. He can't tell whether she's out hard and oblivious, or whether she's fully awake and doing him the favor of ignoring his nocturnal wanderings. He supposes she wouldn't be a very good agent if she wasn't tracking his every move from behind her closed eyelids.

Thankfully, Rogers is fastidious about oiling every hinge in the suite, and the fire escape window slides open silently. When he pokes his head out, the agent posted at the mouth of the alley turns and puts his hand on his holster. The Soldier, on impulse, waves. The agent salutes and resumes parade rest, facing out onto the street. The Soldier crawls out onto the escape and wraps himself up against the chill as best he can. It's the unexpected things, he's finding, that're the hardest with only one arm—complex detail-oriented tasks have their workarounds, but arranging unpredictable textiles? It's almost enough to make him ask for a hook, these stupid little inconveniences. Almost.

He's only just gotten things tucked in perfectly when he hears an unmistakable noise, and tilts his head back against the paneling with a dull thump. Sighs at the stars. Rogers, bless him, is normally as soft-footed as a cat, but half-asleep all those heavy muscles make him uncoordinated, almost bumbling. The Soldier hears him coming practically from the end of the hall. He edges over as Rogers approaches the window, making room.

“You too, huh?” Rogers whispers, as he climbs through the window. He shuts it carefully after himself, which is probably more thoughtful than the Soldier was being, letting all that cold air into the suite.

He grunts in response. When he glances over, Rogers is curled up in a surprisingly compact ball with his arms wrapped around his knees, wearing just a tee-shirt and baggy sweatpants, his bare feet on metal. “Aren't you _freezing_?” the Soldier demands, feeling colder just looking.

Rogers shrugs. “Don't really feel it. I used to, though. A few years ago—for me—I'd've been wrapped up in twice as much as...” He flaps one elbow at the Soldier, and squints blearily. It makes him look young and uncertain. “Feels weird, if I think about it too hard. You okay?”

“Sure,” the Soldier says. “Just—” Gestures at his own head clumsily with a handful of blanket.

“Instant replay,” Rogers says sympathetically, and the Soldier says, feeling oddly relieved, “Yeah.”

Rogers rubs his nose on the inside of his arm and then hooks his chin over it, staring off past the Soldier's head. “I used to think—the serum improved my memory a lot? And I used to get mad at Erskine and Stark, actually. Thought it was their fault I'd get, well, like that. After heavy combat. Turns out it's just a regular thing.”

“Oh, great,” the Soldier says. “Something I _can't_ blame Zola for.”

Rogers snorts and ducks his chin. “Well, there's also—” He stops. Clears his throat.

“What?”

“When you were a baby,” Rogers starts, and glances over at the Soldier out of the corner of his eye. The Soldier doesn't know what Rogers sees, but it makes him carry on. “Your ma used to tell us how you never slept. I mean, that's not uncommon, but you hardly ever cried, apparently. She'd come in and find you standing in your crib, holding onto the railing. She always said it looked like you were listening to something.” Rogers looks down. “You were always up with the chickens when we were kids, too. So, you know, insomnia. Nothing new.”

The Soldier doesn't know whether to be resentfully charmed that he was a strange baby, relieved that his tendency to lay awake all night isn't—entirely, at least—the symptom of some larger insanity, or outraged that Barnes is to blame for another round of nostalgia, reminding Rogers of somebody else even as he's looking the Soldier in the eyes. Is there no part of the Soldier's fundamental make-up that can't be attributed, somehow, in some light, to Barnes's shadow? Is there nothing he can do that would make Rogers think _yikes, my old pal would never do that_ —or is he somehow tethered, somehow restrained from doing anything truly out of character for Barnes? He feels like an actor trying to tell someone he's stuck in the wrong story. Except without fucking up his lines.

“So,” the Soldier says. “Legal guardian?”

Rogers winces. “It's just protocol,” he says. “There's no paper trail, and—”

“I get it.”

“I don't _like_ it,” Rogers growls, and wraps his arms around his legs harder. Thunderously: “They found out you were here about twelve hours after I did. Apparently SHIELD feels its _acceptable_ if you stay with me because I'm capable of _subduing_ _dangerous operatives_.”

The Soldier leans back, trying to find a position where the pack isn't digging into his kidney. “They're aware I'm a fuckin' cripple, right?”

“You're not, though,” Rogers says, “Not if you can defend yourself like that,” and the Soldier says over him, “Yeah, but they don't know that.” Neither did he, to be fair, until it was over and he was still breathing.

Rogers makes a face. “I don't know which option's pissing me off more.”

“What,” the Soldier asks: “Them thinking I'm a liability or them thinking I'm out of the running?” Rogers grunts. “Safer for me if they think the second one.”

“I know. I just—”

“Don't like it. I know.” Poor angry Rogers. “Is there anything you _do_ like?”

He regrets it when Rogers sets his jaw and says, “You. I mean, you're here. You're alive. Guess I can suck up everything else.”

“Have you always been this mushy?” the Soldier asks, which finally makes Rogers laugh, his face clearing. “You've got to like something else, come on. Running. Food. Romanova's bad jokes. That really ugly dog next door—”

“It's such an _ugly dog_ ,” Rogers says, awed.

“Maybe it's engineered,” the Soldier says, as the window opens between them.

Romanova drapes her arms over the sill and rests her chin on her wrists. “If it stays inside when it's supposed to, it's a better science experiment than you two,” she says. “How am I supposed to keep an eye on things if I don't get an invite to the sleepover club, huh?”

Rogers says, “No girls allowed,” but he can't keep a straight face. Romanova glowers and punches him in the bicep. “Sorry, Nat. We couldn't sleep.”

“If you get back in here, there's chamomile tea and a Bob Ross marathon on PBS,” she says.

Rogers sighs. “I love that guy,” he says, and crawls back through the window.

The Soldier lets Romanova help him do the same, and stands still while she fusses his blankets into order. A man's voice comes suddenly from the living room, and he flinches towards it before he realizes it's just the television. Romanova pats his chest; he glances down at her. She looks capable, composed, but more than a little sleepy. He asks, curious: “Did I wake you up?”

“I was already awake,” she says, “But Steve would have, if I hadn't been. Do you think he was that much of a klutz when he was five-foot-nothing?”

“Probably worse,” the Soldier guesses.

“It's really too bad you can't remember anything,” Romanova says, “Or I'd have so much more blackmail material.”

Okay, the Soldier thinks, that's worth a laugh; and does.

 

☙

 

Wilson sends a text fourteen episodes, three naps, and one visit from Hill later. Rogers is sprawled on the floor, his head on Romanova's balled-up leather jacket, his eyelids twitching when the painter on the television slaps water from his brushes.

 _i heard some shit went down._ _u okay man???_

 _I'm fine_ , the Soldier replies. In concession to what Wilson is probably asking: _A little banged up._

 _:(_ , Wilson says. _that's no fun._

 _I helped SHIELD locate some HYDRA bases_. The Soldier chews on his lip and stares at the cursor before he types, unsure, _You and Rogers will have your work cut out for you._

_nah not me. i told steve i needed some time for the day job. he'll have fun without us tho, him & all his overachieving weirdo coworkers._

_You'd rather work in an office than be a superhero?_

_superheroing isn't always good for me_ , Wilson replies. _world needs saving, i'm there, but in the meanwhile my vets need me on the ground. sometimes u gotta pick yr battles._

The Soldier sighs. _Ain't that the truth_ , he says.

 _is shield 2.0 taking you on as a consultant?_ Wilson asks, which is—terrifying on several levels. (2.0? Consultant?) Not least because it puts context to Hill's unnecessarily cryptic parting shot: “We'll be in touch, Sergeant.” He'd been so annoyed that even _Hill_ was giving him the Barnes treatment that he hadn't parsed the preceding words, and now he's regretting not hauling her back into the apartment for clarification.

 _I have no idea_ , he tells Wilson, and almost leaves it at that. He adds, hoping it reads as casual, _Should I be concerned?_

 _hill's good people_ , Wilson says, which doesn't answer the question, and is probably the point. _just yell if they try to make you sign a contract, okay? something tells me yr not super enthused abt getting tied down to another faceless global organization, esp. one that doesn't seem too good at the whole public transparency thing._ A pause. _not that i'm bitter_.

 _This is the only situation in which I'd consider “paranoid” a compliment_ , the Soldier says.

Wilson sends back about twelve smiley-faces.

 

☙

 

Dr. Sousa's arrival a week later is unexpected, jolting the Soldier into the awareness that it's March, and the year is being pulled out from under his feet like a rug. The monotony of living individual days instead of skipping months and years at a stretch has lulled him into a false sense of time, letting him convince himself it's still winter when the trees are blooming riotously outside. He's about as ready for that revelation as he is for Sousa. She must have colluded with Rogers beforehand, because she brings him a new cane.

“Good,” she says, when the Soldier drops it on the ground beside his bed.

“What's good?”

“You hate it,” says Sousa. “That's good. You'll get rid of it sooner.”

“I still need it,” he says irritably.

“Did I say that? I didn't say that. It does mean, however, that you'll turf the bastard the second you can, instead of clinging to it like a limpet. Take your shirt off.”

The Soldier considers telling her where she can stick the cane, his shirt, and all the rest of it, and decides to take the high road instead, wrestling his way out of his three layers. Sousa glowers when she sees the lurid yellow bruises packed around his upper body. The biggest one, under his left armpit, is still a murderous purple-black in the middle, shading out to green as it wraps around his side. The rib underneath it has healed slightly askew; he can feel the achy bump of it if he probes the bruise. It should really be re-broken and set properly, but that's not going to happen.

“I thought I told you not to exercise,” Sousa says.

“I thought you told me not to die,” the Soldier snaps back.

The look she gives him in return is magnificently exasperated, but she doesn't chew him out any further. For all that her examination is brisk and uncomfortable and her fingers are like ice, she seems grudgingly pleased about the condition of his stump and his port, which he'll take as an overall victory. She also gives him terse instructions for how to improve the phantom pain in his missing hand. It's all the good grace he gets before she runs the endoscope, which is an unpleasant experience for everyone: the Soldier struggling to control his panic in a body that refuses to listen to reason, Sousa unwilling or unable to soothe his nerves, and Rogers fretting, wherever he is, over the prolonged gagging, which is anything but quiet. He's about to call Rogers to come in and hold him down, fuck the consequences, just get it _over_ with, when the both of them try a new approach out of sheer frustration and manage to bully the scope down his nose. Sousa scowls at her laptop while the Soldier lays very still and focuses on his breathing.

“This scarring's about as good as it's ever going to get,” she says, adjusting her grip. “But your inflammation is markedly improved. Less vomiting? Less pain?” He turns his thumb up on the blankets. “Good. Experiment with hot drinks, nothing too acidic. No black coffee.”

With the tube in his throat, he can't confess about his beverage adventures with Barton, which is probably for the best. He thinks about darts to distract himself as the scope moves further down.

“Epithelium looks better,” Sousa says. “I'm going to swap you out for a fresh set of everything. Don't move.”

While she opens the hole in his stomach, the Soldier stares at the ceiling and wishes for a mirror. He doesn't have any particular desire to see whatever's going on in there, but he'd rather watch what Sousa's doing than live in ignorance about how his body works. He'd felt the same way about the arm, once, long ago, and feels distantly surprised that the feeling remains, and then surprised by his surprise, as though in the intervening time he'd started thinking of his past self as a different person. He is, he supposes. A little. The concept—that he was a completely separate person once, and that Rogers expects him to be that person again—is less than appealing, but he has it on good authority that changing is what people do, on a smaller scale. Seven and Cruz would often use some variation on “when I was young and stupid” to preface a story. That should make it all right, shouldn't it? If it's normal for other people to change, then he can too, can't he, without worrying that he's becoming—someone else?

The Soldier glances to the side when he catches motion in the doorway: Rogers, lurking. Sousa chooses that moment to start sliding the scope out of his nose. He coughs it up with little dignity, all too aware of his audience. He can't decide if it's a consolation or a point of shame that Rogers has seen him much worse off than this. “Come to check my insides?” he asks when its out, and gets swatted by Sousa.

“I saw enough of your insides on the dining room table,” Rogers says dryly, but he's smiling. Leaning against the door-jamb with Sousa's back between him and the Soldier's stomach contents. Just when the Soldier thinks he's escaped one conversation without being dragged through the past, Rogers adds, “Not to mention during the war. I'll pass, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” says Sousa. “Personally, I'm of the opinion that friends should always leap at the chance to see one another's gastroesophageal systems in action. Weeds out the weak.”

“You must've been a laugh and a half in med school, ma'am,” says Rogers.

Sousa bares her teeth at the Soldier's abdomen in a way that's almost friendly. “Oh Captain my Captain—you haven't lived until you've made your gross anatomy supervisor cry.”

Rogers shoots him a horrified wince over Sousa's head. The Soldier has to bite his lip to fend off a wave of inappropriate hysterics. His shoulders shake anyway.

“The best part about gross anatomy lab was that my patients _didn't move_ ,” Sousa says warningly, but she's snapping her gloves off as she says it. Once he's mobile, Sousa packs her supplies and lets him hook up a fresh tube instead of prodding him with her own cold fingers. “Pain? Blood? Gastric acid leakage? No? Good. I'll be back in May to show you how to do that yourself. No more fisticuffs.”

“That's not really within my control.”

Sousa, halfway off the bed, sits back down and leans very close to the Soldier's face. “To my knowledge, the record for survival of clinical death in deep hypothermic laboratory conditions without permanent brain injury is thirty minutes. I once brought a man back from the dead with cerebral functioning intact after forty-two minutes of circulatory arrest, and the only reason it hasn't shown up in the medical literature is because I performed it in the Itombwe while actively hallucinating from cobra venom. Please be aware that I have no compunctions about stopping your vital functions, fixing a cup of tea, and booting you back into your mortal coil before it gets cold. Now, what did I say?”

“No more fisticuffs,” the Soldier says.

“Good lad,” Sousa says. As she elbows her way past Rogers: “I don't like that hair loss. Switch his formula to something with a higher iron and B-complex load. If he still looks like a cockatoo with a behavioral disorder in May, I'm blaming you. And for god's sake, get a mirror box for that arm so I can cut his analgesics.” A few moments later, the front door slams. Rogers and the Soldier look at each other from across the room.

“Do you ever get that feeling,” the Soldier says, “Like you're really, really glad HYDRA never came across certain individuals?”

“ _Oh_ yeah,” says Rogers.

 

☙

 

The first thing the Soldier sees when he opens his eyes is a small package positioned suspiciously in the very center of his open doorway. Since it's wrapped in bright blue paper, he doesn't immediately panic and think _bomb!_ , but it's a confusing moment. He's perplexed enough that he doesn't unhook everything like he usually does, just drags the feeding pole over and stares at the box blearily, the hems of his too-long pajamas bunched up under his heels. When a distance examination reveals nothing useful, he crouches to unfold the little card taped to the top.

_Happy Birthday! :)_

“Hell,” the Soldier says, and sits hard on the floor.

It had to happen sometime, he supposes: firm odds of one in three hundred and sixty-five. The knowledge doesn't make him feel less conflicted. This is his body, surely, he can think of these bones as _his_ , after this long. And sure, maybe his body was brought into the world on a particular March 10th: that's fine. It's fine. He probably shares that distinction with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of other people. But it's also the day _Barnes_ was brought into the world, and that's what Rogers is really celebrating. However it might be tailored to his current needs, this gift isn't for the Soldier.

Inside the box is a multi-tool (practical), a gift certificate for a nearby coffee shop (thoughtful), a baffling assortment of iron-on patches (what?), and at the bottom, folded efficiently small, a kitten-soft black sweater with big buttons and deep pockets. The random selection of items is a mystery, at least until he finds the note, which has slid down the side of the box and under the tissue paper. The certificate is from Rogers, but the multi-tool is from Wilson, the sweater is from Romanova, and the patches—he should have figured—are from Barton. It's all very kind. He doesn't know how to feel.

Once he's dressed, he texts his—is _friends_ the right word? it probably is, god help him—and thanks them. Rogers requires face-to-face interaction, but luckily for the Soldier, Rogers is on the other side of the island with his mouth full, and can't respond to the Soldier's awkward expression of gratitude with anything more than a thumbs-up. The Soldier manages to escape out the door with his ego intact.

At least until the barista at the coffee shop exclaims, “Hi, Birthday Guy! You're shorter than I thought you'd be. But then, Steve-o makes everybody seem small.”

The Soldier sighs, resigned to his fate. “I hear you, sister.”

“Aren't you sweet. What can I get for you, handsome?”

“Anything liquid,” he says; “Surprise me,” and she grins the grin of the mad.

 

☙

 

Sousa isn't wrong, damn her. The mirror box reduces the pain in his left arm significantly. While it doesn't outright disappear, it lets his ghost-fist unclench, and the tingling becomes less frantic over time, dulling into something he can almost ignore. She's also right about the hair loss: just a few weeks after the new formula arrives, and already feeling marginally more energetic, the Soldier discovers stubble where he previously had smooth patches of skin. Four days after that, like his scalp was laying in wait for the starting gun, he has a quarter-inch of fuzz, baby-fine and several shades lighter than the rest of his hair. It's about the right time for Rogers to clip his undercut again, but the Soldier stares at himself in the bathroom mirror and feels an inexplicably ballooning surge of anger.

With the long section of his hair slicked wet from the shower, his sides growing out, and the weight he's been gaining back, he looks more and more like Barnes every day, Barnes from the oval frame, their cheekbones and their mouth in the mirror like a collage on the wrong skull. Tank and Seven once played a game on Amy's phone that combined two people's faces to make a hypothetical baby, with predictably humorous results, and it's a less funny version he's looking at now, the half-starved love child of Barnes and the Asset staring back at him with a disgust that's all his own. He thinks about Rogers saying _you started out blonde_. Thinks about a photograph of two little boys in their shirtsleeves and suspenders. It's anger that makes him chop off eight inches of hair with the scissors from the vanity drawer; anger that makes him reach for the shaving soap and the safety razor.

He regrets it halfway through the first stroke.

Too late to turn back, so he keeps going. It's a logistical challenge, and harder than he'd thought it would be. It might be less difficult with two arms and more patience, but as it stands, he cuts himself a disappointing number of times. It can't be that much harder than shaving a face, can it? Shaving a head? Apparently he's wrong. His motivation to continue isn't so much that he'll look like an idiot if he stops, but the hope that he'll look much less like Barnes if he finishes. He'll tattoo his face if that's what it takes, he thinks irrationally, as he rinses off lather and blood from his neck in Rogers's tiny sink, splashing water onto the counter in his haste to see himself, not a dead man, in the mirror.

It doesn't help.

 _Fuck_.

Those are still Barnes's eyes, glaring back at him. Barnes's nose, Barnes's jaw. What did he think it was going to change, exactly? That he'd dig down to the skin and look like a completely new person? That Barnes's head without hair would magically stop looking like Barnes? An exercise in futility and he should have _known_. The anger washes out of him, replaced by exhaustion, his hand on the counter and his head bowed over the sink. This isn't a fight worth having with himself; he can't wrestle history. He could tear off all his skin and Barnes would still be the man who owned these bones first.

He expects Rogers to be shocked, when he comes home and sees the Soldier reading in the armchair, but Rogers just blinks and says, “Hey, wow. Starting over?”

“Something like that,” the Soldier says.

“Keen. Suits you.”

“Yeah,” the Soldier says, edging as close as he dares, “But you're biased.”

Rogers, unbothered, grins. He shrugs expansively. “What are friends for?”

 

☙

 

He _wants_ to like Rogers, is the trouble.

Roger is earnest and upbeat, eager to please, and very, very kind. It's not just a special thing he whips out in front of the Soldier; there's no unique reserve of kindness, hoarded from everyone else and saved for him alone. The Soldier's had several chances to observe Rogers's unfailing politeness when dealing with everyone he meets, with the possible exception of Romanova, but they have a back-and-forth siblingesque comedy routine that seems to have its own rules. He's self-aware, too, which isn't the same as being kind—the Soldier realized, after a while, that Rogers swears easily in front of him and Wilson, but he scrubs his language clean in front of women and children. Even his sincere, deadpan humor is the brand the Soldier appreciates, the brand that teases without ever becoming outright mockery.

If the Soldier and Rogers had met in a normal way, he thinks they would have gotten along well. Their histories aren't analogous in the details, but they both lived through something that's hard to simplify, hard to comprehend. A vast thing has been done to them, and there's room for companionship in solidarity, in something other people might not understand. The Soldier doesn't want to belittle anyone else's hurts, but he thinks what happened to him and Rogers is, in some ways, too big for regular people to properly sympathize with. _I was in a car accident; I lost my daughter; my house burned down_ : but did you lose an entire world? He cringes the instant he thinks it—to the person who's lost their legs, or their child, or their home, it must feel like that, like everything's been taken from them, like the universe has drained out around them. The scale shouldn't matter; it isn't a competition. In his case, though, in Rogers's—he wonders. Something about the surreal extremes they've been subjected to. The sheer absurdity of it. It's overkill. In a novel, he'd never believe it.

He'd like to sit Rogers down and say: hey. You know what happened to us? You know how awful it was? Let's not think about it. Let's be grateful we survived, and then come up with something better. Let's stop allowing the things that broke us to keep breaking us. How about we put our heads together and find a way to move on.

But between them, getting in the way of any potential human connection, making liars out of both of them and hurting besides—is always James Buchanan Goddamn Barnes.

 

☙

 

“He's driving me insane,” the Soldier says.

Wilson looks startled, but less so than the Soldier expected, given the abrupt appearance of a retired assassin with too little hair and too much beard in his coffee shop. Wilson recovers quickly, taking a bite of his sandwich before scooting his untouched cup of tea across the table. The Soldier hangs his cane off the back of the chair, sits down, and takes it without comment.

Wilson says, “Before we kvetch about Steve, I'm not sure if I should be asking 'did you walk here?' or 'did you follow me here?' because honestly, I'm gonna be naggy about a yes to either of those.”

“I didn't follow you,” the Soldier says, taking out the tea bag and squeezing it. “I overheard you complaining to Steve about how much you hate allergies on the phone. Google Maps said this was the nearest coffee shop to the VA with gluten-free options. And yes, I walked. It's only forty minutes.”

More than an hour, at his pace, but he doesn't say that. He also doesn't say that he _kind of_ followed Wilson here, because he wasn't entirely positive when Wilson's lunch break started, so he waited for twenty minutes on a bench across the street, giving Wilson eight minutes to stand in line and get his food before the Soldier announced himself. He'd spent the time on an internal examination, surprised to be in less pain than he expected; either the new formula is making his painkillers more effective, or it's correcting some unknown deficiency that was causing the pain in the first place, but the aches in his joints aren't nearly so sharp: bruisey, now, like old muscle strain, like overexertion. He's probably pushed himself too far, but that in itself is almost a nice feeling, that he _can_ push himself without keeling over entirely.

He sees the moment Wilson decides to drop it.

“I like the hair,” Wilson says. “Or, uh, lack thereof. Was this a you-decision or a let's-fix-how-Steve-messed-up decision?”

“Me. Are you sparing my feelings, or—”

“No, I like it.” Wilson leans over the table a little and peers at him. “Kinda rugged testosterone dudebro, which is funny, because you're a total marshmallow. Steve know you're out of the apartment?”

The Soldier takes a tentative sip of tea. It's green, which surprises him; he'd have wagered Wilson was more of a fancy relaxing-jasmine-blend kind of guy. He swallows and says, “What do you think?”

Wilson makes an expression that's not quite a grimace, and not quite a smile. “Where is he?”

“Don't know. Out. Said he'd be back by evening.”

Wilson spends a minute looking at the Soldier, and he sits still for it, slowly relaxing. The half-crazed noisiness of the coffee shop—brewing machines and small children and music played too loud—is already loosening the tension in his shoulders. After Rogers's apartment, it's heaven. When the Soldier finally moves, turning the mug slowly on the tabletop, Wilson says, “Barnes—”

“Don't call me that,” the Soldier says, whip-crack harsh. Wilson's head moves back on his neck. The Soldier scrubs his hand over his eyes. Softer: “Sorry.”

“S'all right,” says Wilson. “Explains some things Steve said.” He pauses. The Soldier makes a _go on_ gesture between them. “Yeah, okay, invasive question which you do _not_ have to answer, but I'm gonna shoot for the moon anyway: why do you still live with him?”

The Soldier twitches.

It's not as though he can't make it on his own. Especially now that he's steadier on his own two feet, now he's gained a few scraps of independence. He might be disabled, but he isn't an invalid; his medical supplies might be expensive, but he knows how to support himself. It might be tough, not only physically but personally, after Desmond's lessons in moral behavior dug deep trenches in his brain, but given the right motivation—well, just because he doesn't have the resources he used to doesn't mean he doesn't still have the knowledge. With planning, luck, and a few carefully managed bursts of physical effort, he could collect what he needs to live comfortably. Start a new life. Start a life, period. There's nothing stopping him from leaving, except: Rogers has been so kind. And then there's the thing he doesn't want to think about.

The knowing.

He could almost handle actually remembering—more than he does, at any rate—but it's the knowing without context that drives him up the wall. He hates the deja-vu feeling more than he hates the actual memories, the rare times they intrude. In fact, although he's loathe to admit it, it's the strongest proof he has that he's who Rogers says he is—or was. The specter of Bucky Barnes hanging around his neck like an albatross. He doesn't like leaving things half-done; he wants resolution. Not to remember, but. To puzzle it out with someone who understands. Answers. If he runs, he's never going to get them.

But he'll die before he admits as much to Wilson.

“I think he'd kill himself if I left,” the Soldier tries, but it sounds weak even to his ears.

“Oh, good,” Wilson says brightly, “Here was me thinking you were sticking around because he's the next best thing to a handler and you're scared to go it on your own.”

The Soldier plants his face in his hand and groans, quiet, deep in his throat.

It's not the truth; it's _worse_.

“Look,” Wilson says, “I'm no shrink. I've got my counseling certificate and I've got a load of experience with vets. But I've also seen your file, remember, and there hasn't been a time in the last seventy years when you've been in charge. Go ahead and call bullshit, but—”

“You're forgetting Philly,” the Soldier says, peeling his hand off his eyes.

“Yeah, but even putting the issue of _hard drug use_ aside, was it independence? Or was somebody else calling the shots?”

The Soldier says nothing.

Wilson doesn't look smug or victorious; just nods. “He's still calling you Bucky, then?”

“Yeah, but that's not—” The Soldier lets out a frustrated huff. “That doesn't bother me so much. Really,” he says, to Wilson's disbelieving look. “What else is he going to call me? I haven't exactly gone through a fucking baby book and given him anything else. No, it's—the rest of it that gets to me.”

“ 'Hey, Buck, do you remember...' ” Wilson ventures, and the Soldier nods hard. “That's rough, man, it really is, but you've got to see where he's coming from.”

“That's the worst part,” the Soldier says. “He's not technically wrong. He looks at me and, sure, of course he sees his best friend, I'm wearing his actual body, but I'm—I'm _not_ him. I'm not. Rogers has to see that, doesn't he? He's not dumb.”

“Definitely not,” Wilson agrees. “But trauma does funny things to people's heads. So does grief. Reality's—not always your friend. You get that, obviously. I mean, hell, maybe more than most people. The rug's gonna get yanked out from under Steve's feet eventually, and things'll be rocky for a while, but it won't last forever.”

Something occurs to the Soldier, but he plays with a rough spot on the mug's handle for a while before convincing himself to say it aloud. Breathes in; breathes out. “Do you think I'm—that my presence is—is keeping that from happening? Keeping the blinkers over his eyes?”

“I couldn't say,” Wilson says diplomatically. “That's not entirely your lookout. You can't live your life for someone else's benefit. I think the more important thing you've got to ask yourself is: is _he_ holding _you_ back?”

The Soldier doesn't answer. He watches a woman on the other side of the room reach across her table and take her girlfriend's hand. The women make sympathetic faces at each other. He glances away, feeling voyeuristic. “Probably,” he says, avoiding Wilson's eyes. After a moment, he looks deliberately, confrontational. Wilson's expression is neutral. “All right, yeah, I'm sure he is. What do you expect me to do about it? Leave, let him shatter, spend half my time worrying about whether I've just permanently broken a national icon?”

“Just between you and me,” Wilson says, “Steve was broken before you came crashing back into his life, man. Unless a time machine whisks him back to Brooklyn circa 1930, that guy is always going to be fundamentally a little cracked.”

“And I'm supposed to take a hammer to the cracks, is that it?”

“If you let a kid keep their security blanket until they're eighteen, is that kinder than preparing them to deal with the real world?”

“Ouch,” the Soldier mutters.

Wilson grins crookedly. “Look, I'm not saying you should leave a 'fuck you' post-it and hop on a Greyhound, but you're both using each other for totally moronic reasons and _not talking_ _about it_ , which I think, so sue me, is probably a better starting point than running away.”

“Honestly, I'd rather run away than talk about it.”

“I dunno, you're doing pretty good right now.”

The Soldier looks down and scuffs his foot against the floor, feeling infantile for his impulse to argue. “Talking is easy. Talking to _Rogers_ is difficult.”

“I get that. Hey,” Wilson says, “If it helps, remember—the war ended for me, you know? I lost a friend, I lost a lot of friends, but I got to come home, and it ended. Shit, in a way, it even ended for you. But _Steve—_ ” Wilson shakes his head. “Steve died and woke up and was fighting aliens inside of a fortnight. He joined the Avengers, he joined STRIKE, found out he'd been working for HYDRA all along, _fought_ HYDRA, kept fighting HYDRA...”

“Shit.”

“Right,” says Wilson. “He hasn't had any closure, let alone time to adjust. I mean, for what the guy's gone through, he's doing an astoundingly good job at the Competent Human Being thing, but that doesn't negate what he _has_ gone through, if that makes any sense.” The Soldier nods. “Also—man, this is totally unwarranted armchair psychology, but bear with me, I don't think I'm crazy—he never got a therapist or anybody to help him transition from 1945 to 2012, so he's coping like a guy from the 40's would, which is, like, stiff-upper-lip-pretend-everything-is-fine shit, at its worst. Not that Steve's _prototypical of his era_ or anything, but—”

The Soldier interrupts Wilson's exaggerated finger quotes. “You think he's fronting.”

“Maybe,” Wilson says. “Admittedly I'm pulling from a biased sample pool, because even my oldest vets have usually been in therapy before, on account of they wouldn't be coming to me if they hadn't. Just the nature of the chain where I sit, right? But a bunch of them either have that mindset or fight it, which is kind of the same thing, if we're talking about history. And if that's even a little true, Steve's working on the same principle that heaps of families did when their guys came home in '45—the war was awful and weird, and people came back different, so if things can just get back to normal, so will their guy. Love is all you need and all that. Well-meaning! But, uh, wrong. Now, psych folks started figuring out that's a pretty poor tactic, and the way we treated soldiers got better and better, but Steve didn't get to see any of that. He wasn't around.”

It hits the Soldier like a load of bricks.

“He thinks if I remember, I'll be fixed,” he says. He looks up at Wilson, horrified. “That's what he thinks, isn't it? I had it the wrong way around. He doesn't think I'll start remembering once I get better. He thinks if things get back to normal first, if I remember being Bucky _now_ , I'll get better _sooner_. Jesus _Christ_.”

“It's probably not that simple,” Wilson hedges, “But yeah, I figure that's in there somewhere.”

“Fuck.” The Soldier clenches his fist; shakes it out and presses it over his mouth instead. He tries to slump back and hits the Joey. He struggles the pack off and drops it—throws it, really—between his feet, tipping back against the chair, smacking his head on the cross-bar. Rubs his forehead and wonders what the everloving fuck he's going to do.

“This is why you've gotta talk to him, man,” says Wilson. “He needs to understand you don't remember being Barnes and you're not going to, either.”

“What he needs to understand is that Barnes is _dead_ ,” the Soldier says. “Dead wherever I—where'd Barnes go missing? I don't remember. Austria. The Alps or something.”

Wilson's quiet for a while. Toys with his spoon. “I never asked,” he says finally. “What's the first thing you remember?”

“Waking up in the snow,” the Soldier says. He shrugs himself into slightly better posture and lifts his stump. “I was on my back and my arm was pinned under a huge rock.”

“Steve said he figured that you—that Bucky fell about nine hundred, maybe a thousand meters altogether,” Wilson says. He sounds distracted, almost distant. When the Soldier looks, Wilson shakes himself and says, “I'm just thinking, you know, head trauma. It's a miracle you woke up at all, but if your body sustained a major brain injury on impact, and your serum fixed you up...I don't know. I don't want to—”

“Trust me,” the Soldier says dryly, “You won't say anything I haven't already wondered about how I got here.”

“Maybe it overwrote Bucky,” Wilson says. “I've never done an autopsy, I've got no idea what a brain looks like after it's been dropped a mile, but the serum might've had to rebuild basically from scratch. All the neural connections that made Bucky, well, _Bucky—_ who knows. But it makes sense, if you can't remember anything at all.” The Soldier doesn't say anything, but he feels a grimace shape itself on his face before he can stop it, and Wilson's head tilts. “Oh. Okay. So, more than nothing, then.”

Worrying, down in the ravine, about someone he'd left behind.

_Come on, Joe DiMaggio, put your money where your mouth is!_

Soft hands, wooden crate heavy-solid against his hipbones, book glue and the smell of cigarettes in his pocket; asphalt on a rooftop elsewhere, baking. His naked chest.

_That's really quite good. Were you...?_

Sky the color of—and the sea—

_I knew him._

“Fragments,” the Soldier tells his lap. “Just, just bits and pieces. No context. You can't tell him,” he says, too fast, looking up and then away. “It wouldn't be fair to—”

“Yeah,” Wilson says quietly.

The Soldier breathes. Music, voices all around them, silverware and ceramics. A toddler babbling at something in the toy corner, a young woman and an old woman nearby, looking at something on the older woman's phone. The toddler runs a toy car up the young woman's shin. He breathes out. “So,” he says, “How's your day going?”

Wilson laughs, startled. “What?”

“I said, how's your day going?” The Soldier leans his chin on his hand as Wilson's baffled grin widens. “You're the one who said we were friends. And that's what friends do, right? Give and take. I've done my bitching, now it's your turn.”

“ _Well_ ,” Wilson says, “This morning I got up at the asscrack of dawn for PT, because I'm an overachieving lunatic, but I _did_ get to run a few laps with a cute single mom who seemed about 8000% cooler than me and I'm still not over it. One of my vets finally got her backdated pension and another guy finally got his service dog, so it was total cupcake anarchy in the meeting today, let me tell you what. Can you eat icing? 'Cause all I could eat was the icing, but _goddamn_. I'm gonna get Thor a box of those things and see how fast he can demolish them. Maybe on camera.”

“Barton brought me a bunch of weird drinks and I didn't die, so probably. Icing's just, what, sugar and butter?”

“New bakery's just around the corner.”

“Yeah, okay, twist my arm,” the Soldier says.

 

☙

 

“This feels like a waste,” Wilson says, as he puts his de-iced cupcake back in its pink box next to the Soldier's.

The Soldier makes a disagreeable noise. “Doesn't taste like a waste,” he says, swallowing. “Besides, how weird would we have looked if we went in there and said, hey, hi, he's allergic to wheat and I can't digest solid food, can we just have a bag of icing? Thanks.” Wilson's laughing before the Soldier's finished. “We can, I don't know, feed these to the pigeons.”

“Better not, it might make them sick.” They look at each other. The Soldier snorts first. Wilson fights it off and pulls a face. “Irony, thy name is cupcake,” he says.

The Soldier laughs and stretches out, dappled sunlight on his jeans. Wilson drapes an elbow over the back of the bench and pulls his ankle up onto his knee. It's almost warm enough for the Soldier to consider taking off one of his jackets, despite the faint breeze stirring the leaves above them. Fluffy clouds moving across the sky. Might rain tonight, he thinks. Dog walkers pass by, and kids, and a teenage couple with electric hair. It feels companionable; peaceful. The Soldier'd been starting to think that the only peace he could get was in heroin or noise, but sitting sober with Wilson is—nice. For as long as it lasts. It seems too short when Wilson looks at his watch, sighs, and says, “Ugh, I'd better be getting back.”

“I'll walk you,” the Soldier says.

“You sure? You got a long trek home.”

“Another ten minutes won't kill me.”

Wilson shoots the Soldier a thoughtful glance. It's a block later when he says, “So, you don't actually have to rush, right?” The Soldier shakes his head. “Because I've got a stack of pamphlets as tall as me to fold before Wednesday, and I totally wouldn't mind a helper monkey. Drive you home later. What do you say?”

“Sounds a lot more fun than my previous plans.”

“Which were?”

“Stare at the walls, read a while, have a panic attack, hide in the closet...”

“No way, man, you're past the closet stage by now, come on.”

“Yeah, okay,” the Soldier admits. “Drudge work's still an improvement on heading back to the mausoleum, though.” He glances at Wilson, who looks like he's trying not to appear confused. “You ever noticed that? How quiet Rogers's place is? How quiet _he_ is?”

“Never really occurred,” Wilson says. “But then, I'm the pepmaster, I can usually wind him up. What's wrong with quiet?”

The Soldier shrugs; watches the tip of his cane swing. “Cryo's quiet. Hunting's quiet. Sniping's quiet. I like being around people. I've had—enough quiet, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Wilson says grimly. “You for sure have. Tell you what, we're gonna leave the door open, I'm gonna introduce you to the full discography of Janelle Monae, we're gonna drink whatever awful tea is left in the break room, and we're gonna get some papercuts. Hell yeah?”

“Hell yeah,” the Soldier says. Wilson goes for a high-five as if by reflex, and looks apologetically as though he's going to pull it back at the last moment, so the Soldier uses the cane to hop a little, smacking the end of his stump against Wilson's palm. Wilson's grin turns goofy at the edges.

The music is good, and the pamphlet-making is meditative, once he gets into a rhythm and figures out how to use his stump to make folding easier. Wilson occasionally hums or half-assedly sings along to the lyrics, and the Soldier's in a place not unlike the focused patience of looking down a scope, so it takes him a minute to realize Wilson's actually speaking to him. He has to say, “Pardon?”

“I said: so have you decided what you _do_ want to be called?”

“Whatever's convenie—hey!” as a paper airplane bounces off his temple. “I thought we were supposed to be folding all of these.”

“I got extras,” Wilson says. “You know that's not really what I asked, right?”

The Soldier shrugs. “Doesn't really matter to me.”

“Yeah, but you've gotta think of yourself as something.”

“I'm the Soldier.”

“Why, though?”

He shifts uncomfortably. It's what he's always been, what he's always thought of himself as, isn't it? And then: remembering when it wasn't. When he thought of himself as an object; a subject. Townsend, crouching beside the chair, giving him something new. _Well, soldier? Are you ready to assassinate a president?_ “I just—am,” he says lamely. Firmer, “Hey, if people can get away with calling themselves Snoop Dogg and Ke$ha...”

“I _ask_ ,” Wilson says over his irrelevant sideline, “Because I happen to think you're doing a really great job integrating after a total cosmic shitshow, but standardized names are really important to regular people, and you're gonna have to pick one someday.”

“What are you, my mother?” the Soldier says, and then feels sort of terrible. Wilson's glare, at least, is mostly mockery. “Yeah, no, I get it. I just don't—like it. I don't know _why_.”

“Well, it's not something anybody ever really takes lightly,” Wilson says, easier. “People sit on legal name changes for a long time. And in stories, if you know something's true name, you have power over it.”

The Soldier shudders. “Thanks for that nightmare fuel.”

“Anytime, man.”

Subject change, the Soldier thinks frantically. “So—who're all these pamphlets for?”

“Sad, lonely military charities,” Wilson sighs. “You caught the posters in the hall, right? See, the government prefers to fund weapons rather than veterans' programs, so the best charities are private, but marketing is all about saleability, right? And it's just inherently harder to get people's attention for big scary vets as opposed to, like, adorable orphaned puppies. Folks are more willing to give money to the puppies, because cute.”

“See, there's their problem,” the Soldier says, waving a pamphlet. “They should have hot stuff like you on the covers.”

Wilson actually flushes. “You,” he says, pointing at the Soldier with his scissors, “Are a dangerous person.”

“That's what they tell me,” the Soldier says.

 

☙

 

In the end, it takes him nine long days to marshal his courage.

It's not going to be an easy thing, he realizes immediately; he's not fretting for _nothing_. He hates hurting people. If Rogers has a weak point, a seam, it's Barnes—where he's sewn together; where he'll rip apart. There's no gentle scenario the he can think of to break it to Rogers that his friend hasn't, and never will, come home from the war. He's going to have to be cruel. He can't think of any other way. Can't think of _a way_ , period, but it's a start, the notion that he'll come into it hard and sharp and make the lines between them clear. He wants to be the knife that makes the wound cleaner.

He knows, though, that he's more like a bludgeon.

Rogers is on the sofa when the Soldier comes out of his room, curled up small—as small as he can, at any rate, the density of his muscles working against him—with his toes tucked down between the cushions, frowning at his phone. He's scrolling rather than tapping, which means he's probably getting worked up about some wrong-headed article or another, and the Soldier's not interrupting anything important. He hovers in the doorway anyway, torn between the desire to get this the fuck over with and the desire to forget about it, carry on as they have, feign ignorance and wait for Rogers to work it out for himself. That, the Soldier suspects, might be the only thing crueler than what he's about to do.

“Hey,” he says, and Rogers looks up, brightening from the eyes out, lowering his phone.

“Hey,” Rogers says. When the Soldier doesn't come any closer: “Everything okay?”

“I need to,” the Soldier says, and makes himself come into the room before he continues. Feeling like he's looming over Rogers and not enjoying it, he sits, dropping the Joey beside the sofa, crossing his legs. He looks at his hand in his lap and feels suddenly as though he's forgotten everything he wanted to say.

Rogers, patient, turns off his phone and puts it on the coffee table.

“Wilson said I should—” The Soldier sucks in a deep breath that doesn't feel like it reaches the bottom of his lungs at all. “Wilson said I should talk to you.”

“Sure.”

The Soldier begins with “You've...” and then stalls out entirely, his throat closing.

Rogers says, “Hang on,” and pops up off the sofa and into the kitchen, pouring two mugs of cold coffee from the carafe and putting them in the microwave. He doesn't sneak any glances behind him while he waits, his hands on the counter and his head set low, the shapes of his back moving under his shirt. Concerned, then, but not anxious or distressed, if the Soldier's become any judge of character over the last few months. The microwave dings. Rogers brings his over black; the Soldier's, with milk and sugar.

“Looked like you could use it,” Rogers explains, which means the Soldier not only feels like he hasn't slept in a week, he apparently looks it, too.

The Soldier holds onto the mug instead of the handle. Too hot, burning his fingertips, the upper curve of his palm, the bone at the base of his thumb. He doesn't adjust his grip. Moves his mouth. He tries again to say _you've got to stop pretending I'm going to remember_ and says instead, tangled up in his own honesty, “I can't do this anymore.”

“Buck—”

“No,” the Soldier says, and Rogers comes up short. Silence, so thick the Soldier can hear the electronic buzz of the wires in the room, people talking on the street outside. The fridge isn't even humming. He forces himself not to look away when Rogers catches his gaze.

“No?” says Rogers, carefully neutral.

“No.”

“Okay.” Rogers laces his fingers together, leans forward. “Okay, I can—do you want me to call you something else...instead?”

“No,” the Soldier says. “I mean—” His hand clenching dangerously on the mug, his bones shifting. He puts it on the coffee table before he can find out which will give first. Sloppy: hot coffee pooling on the glass. Unsteady hand. “What I mean is—”

Rogers's throat moving. His long eyelashes. The Soldier wipes his palm on his jeans.

“What I _mean_ is,” he says; swallows, “What I mean is, I'm not—him.”

“You're—”

“Do you want me to get better?”

Rogers rocks backwards. There, in the lines around his eyes, the first instant of hurt. It makes something clench uncomfortably in the Soldier's chest. Rogers says, offended, “Of course.”

The Soldier shakes his head. “No, you don't. You want him to get better. You want him back. You want _me_ to disappear.”

“Bucky—”

The Soldier slams the back of the couch with the flat of his hand and shouts: “I'm a _person_!” Rogers freezes. “I'm my own fucking person! I'm not your pal, I'm not him, I'm not the boy in the photograph, Rogers, I don't remember and I'm not going to and you have to _let it go_.”

“Just because you don't remember,” Rogers says. The Soldier bites down with the effort of not interrupting him, of trying to keep this civil, letting Rogers say his piece. Rogers licks his teeth and tries a different angle. “You have to give yourself a little more time,” he says. Reasonable tones, palms out, beseeching. It reminds the Soldier of the ones who begged. He shudders. “It's only been four months—”

“It's been a year,” the Soldier says. “For me.”

It seems as though, for a moment, Rogers deflates. And then he rallies. “It doesn't mean it won't come back. You'll remember, you—”

The Soldier says, “I don't _want_ to.”

Rogers's open mouth.

“I don't want to.” He sounds raw. His voice like road-rash feels. “I don't want the memories of some guy who's been dead for—” He stops. Says, crueler than he ever intended on being, “Maybe if you'd been there, after, when it was fresh, maybe you could've made me be him, but you weren't, and then it was too late.”

“I'm sorry,” Rogers says, hearing the wrong parts, thank fuck: “God, I'm—I'm so sorry I didn't come find you. I can't ever be sorry enough for that. You've got to know. Everybody had their reasons why I shouldn't, and they outranked me and I didn't _fight_ them, I just—”

“You wouldn't have found anything,” the Soldier says. “How long would it've taken you to get back there? A week? More?” He shakes his head once, hard, just a jerk to the side. Rogers's jaw moves under his skin. “And even if you had, you would've gone back for Barnes, but he wouldn't have been there. It was _me_. I don't know if it was instant or if HYDRA finished the job later, but it was me down there in the snow. That's what I remember. I don't remember you or anything else. Barnes hit the ground and _I woke up_ ,” pointing at himself, his hand like a claw, “I woke up in the fucking snow, me, I cut off my arm, I got out of the ravine—my lungs, my legs, my pain.”

Rogers makes a noise like he's going to speak, and the Soldier raises his voice, hurting. “It wasn't him they—it wasn't him, it was me. Barnes didn't feel any of it. I outlived Zola and Pierce and _I_ had to figure out how to be a person in pieces, not him. You should be grateful for that, that your friend didn't have to—”

“When I found you on that table—”

“You don't get to erase me!” he shouts over Rogers, a jerk in his body like violence, and he tucks his arm close, presses it into his belly so he won't strike out. “You don't get to do that, you don't have the fucking _right_. Not after all the work I—I had to learn how to—frankly it's a miracle,” he says, making a sound almost like a laugh, “It's a miracle I turned out halfway human, figuring this shit out on my own, watching the people I—raised by HYDRA, socialized by a,” gesturing towards Philly, apologizing to Tank in his head, “A—a junkie, a homeless guy with a fucking hole in his head teaching me basic ethics _—_ ”

“You didn't need it,” Rogers says. His face flushed with rage. He's angrier than the Soldier's ever seen him. “You're a good person, you were always a good person.”

“Like hell I didn't need it,” the Soldier snarls. “She told me that, too. She told me I was a good person after I _murdered somebody_ for _heroin_.”

Rogers's breath hisses in through his teeth. Out, silently. “We shot people in the war for a lot less than that. You were doing what you had to, to survive.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” The _balls_ on this guy. The Soldier can't take any more of this sitting down; he'll vibrate right out of his skin. He paces to the window and back, as far as the tube will let him, pushing his hand hard over his skull, sandpapery three-day hair scraping up his palm. “Do you really believe that? Is that how you sleep at night? Figuring out how to—justify everything I did? You can't pick and choose, you can't run off to your weekend job taking down bad guys and then come home and tell me what _I_ did was _survival_. You can't fucking excuse me just because I look like _him_.” When he reaches the sofa and turns, unsteadily, Rogers has his shoulders back, his arms crossed. The Soldier's lips lift off his teeth. “If it'd been—what story would you go on and tell yourself if it'd been somebody else under there, huh? If it'd been somebody else and your people captured him and assigned you to be his minder—”

“I don't know, because it didn't _happen_ like that, it was _you—_ ”

“—would you have excused him too? If he looked enough like your friend, if you could pretend—”

“Bucky,” Rogers says.

“Would you even have let me live if I hadn't looked like— _what_?” as Rogers grabs the Soldier's wrist with a horrified expression. The sudden transition from anger to panic on Rogers's face disorients him; it wasn't meant to go like this. He feels like he's switched the channel when he didn't mean to and tuned into a live feed of Rogers's worst nightmares.

“Don't think about that,” Rogers says, reedy. “Don't—that's not a nice thing to think about. You're here, that's. I'm glad. That it worked out that way.”

“But if it hadn't,” he presses. “If the mask hadn't come off—” When Rogers doesn't answer right away, the Soldier tries to take his arm back. He assumes Rogers will hold him and pulls too hard, Rogers's loose fingers falling away; he almost smacks himself on the rebound.

“But it didn't happen like that,” Rogers says. “I recognized you. I knew you right away.”

 _But I knew him_.

The Soldier grits his teeth. “That's not how it felt to me,” he says, over the thing in his head shrieking: _liar liar liar_. “That's not,” defensive, too fast: _control yourself_. “It felt like what they did. I thought you were,” _I thought I knew you_ , “I thought you were one of them.”

“What did they,” Rogers says, and stops.

“They were always asking me questions I couldn't answer.” The Soldier shrugs. “And then.”

“They'd hurt you.” Rogers puts his hands over his face, presses his knuckles into his eye sockets. Mumbles: “God.”

“And how is it any different—” Fuck, don't do this, don't say this— “How is it any different, what they—they kept trying to burn me out of my head, and, and maybe I came back different every time, I don't know, but they didn't want _me_ , any of me, they wanted somebody else just like you want somebody else, and maybe it'd be nice if—” He almost can't, the way Rogers looks. Coughs it up like an organ between them. “If you'd let me be—Rogers,” he says, and Rogers, distraught, stops avoiding his eyes. “It'd be nice, if. If I could figure that out. If I could be. Me.”

Rogers, fingers against his mouth, says nothing.

“No matter how much you want me to be him, I can't,” the Soldier says. Going in for the kill. His voice low, crackling. He has to drag it up from his feet. “He's dead. Barnes is dead. He's gone. He's—not in here, anymore.”

Rogers whispers: “I know.”

The Soldier sits down like he's been shot.

Hollow, he repeats: “You know?” Rogers, head leaning back onto the sofa, looking at the ceiling, nods. “Then why—”

Rogers rolls his head on the fabric, tilting towards the Soldier the most miserable expression he's ever seen on a human face.

“God,” the Soldier says. “Goddamn—” and starts to laugh. Rogers flinches. “We're such grade-a _assholes_. Look at us. You using me so you don't have to mourn him again—me using you for your fucking charity.” He's grinning, but he doesn't think it looks any kind of nice. He feels—unbalanced. Shuddering in long waves. Anger, he thinks at first, and then, as though he's changed it by examining it, as though he's overturned a rock and found a dead thing underneath: terror. Clenching his teeth like it's ever done anything to stop the shakes. “Fuck, they—why do they let us out? They should—should keep people like us in _zoos_.”

“Bucky,” Rogers says quietly.

The Soldier puts his fluttering hand over his eyes. They breathe, both of them, for a long time.

“I'm sorry,” says Rogers.

“Yeah,” the Soldier murmurs. “Me too.”

“I should've—”

The Soldier shakes his head, takes his hand off his eyes. Rogers looks shellshocked and profoundly unhappy. “It's not on you, I should've put my foot down a long time ago. You were—your friend's body came back without your friend in it. Fuck, that's—nobody should have to figure out how to deal with that.”

“I'm fine,” Rogers says tightly.

It's like a door being slammed. The Soldier hasn't seen a worse example of 'fine' since he saw his own skeleton in Rogers's bathroom mirror. “You're not _fine_ , Rogers, you're a fucking disaster zone. Have you talked to anybody? About this?”

Rogers snorts. “Yeah, what I really need is some quack telling me that I'm _acting irrationally because I'm grieving_.” The accent Rogers puts on is so clipped and derisive the Soldier thinks he must be impersonating someone in particular. “I already know I'm being an idiot. No thanks.”

“I didn't say a shrink,” the Soldier says. “A friend, anybody—” The expression that flits over Rogers's face then is so close to a breaking point that the Soldier stops dead. It reminds him of putting his foot down on an icy lake, the gunshot crack that says: you've been warned. The Soldier doesn't need three guesses to deduce who Rogers took all his heavy problems to in the past. Shit. Shallow waters all around them.

“You're one to talk,” Rogers says, but his heart isn't in it; there's no bite.

“I've been talking to people,” the Soldier says. “Barton. Romanova. I talked to Wilson. Wilson, um.” Will this be comforting, or another blow? “Wilson thinks that—it was instantaneous. That he—that there wasn't any suffering at all. He thinks the serum had to rebuild everything,” gesturing to his own head, “In here.”

“Rebuilding.” Rogers nods reasonably. Vacant eyes. “Of course. Explains why you don't have any of Bucky's memories.”

It's that, more than anything, Rogers's too-light flippant tone, that makes the Soldier feel no better than a low-down dog, a child. Hoarding the little bits of Barnes he has because he thinks he knows what's best. Like a lock of hair or a photograph he's hiding in a box. They belong to Rogers more than they belong to the Soldier, those scraps of airy nothing that used to comprise a living, breathing human being, who was loved by somebody, by many somebodies. A wash of jealousy crests up that makes him feel even less virtuous.

“I think,” the Soldier starts, and Rogers cuts him off with a hand, anger flaring up, a match to a bonfire.

“Don't,” Rogers growls. “Don't—don't patronize me, don't tell me you remember something, or.” The Soldier flinches at the brush with mind-reading. Rogers jerks, suddenly, like he's been gutted. He moves to stand up. “Hard enough without—just—I'd like to be alone.”

The Soldier impulsively grabs Rogers's wrist, halfway through his rise, knowing he might get punched in the face for it: combat reflexes. He's lucky Rogers is careful. Rogers is so careful with his body when he's angry, the Soldier realizes. He must've had to learn. Rogers sits back down heavily.

“You don't have to be,” the Soldier says. He feels detached—delirious. Whiplash, after being so determined to strike a blow. “It doesn't have to be and/or, I don't want you to have to—”

Rogers makes a face that looks terrible on him, a wry little smirk that isn't like him at all: sharp, unkind. “Are you saying you want to be friends?”

“Are you saying you _don't_?” the Soldier retorts, and Rogers almost smiles for real. “You did—what you did was a good thing. I wouldn't have made it without you. I mean, I might've died, but you also, you helped me be—safe. And got me off the drugs. And maybe it wasn't for _me_ , but I'm grateful anyway. So.” Swallows dust. “If you want me to go, I'll understand. But,” as he lets go of Rogers's wrist, offering his hand and a weak grin instead, “Our weird friends would be real upset if we never spoke again.”

Rogers ducks his chin; sighs. “They'd probably lock us in a room together until we made nice,” he says when he looks up. He shakes the Soldier's hand, decisively firm and yet somehow impersonal, the way he must greet politicians and celebrities. The smile doesn't take long to vanish. “I need something to call you. So I don't mess up.”

“Whatever works.”

Rogers looks as though he's about to argue; the Soldier can see it building in his face, the tension of his shoulders, the opening of his hands—and then he subsides. “Yeah. Okay.”

“I'm sorry,” the Soldier says. “For—everything.”

“Yeah,” Rogers murmurs, and this time, when he gets up to leave, the Soldier doesn't stop him.

 

☙

 

Tension, after.

The Soldier fumbles through a few terrible conversations in which he tries to say that he'll find another place to stay if Rogers prefers, and Rogers makes equally fumbling replies that nevertheless boil down to _under no uncertain circumstances do I want you to leave_ , all while managing to avoid one another's eyes. They dance around each other like feral cats: hungry, but too shy to come closer. Rogers spends less time in the suite. The Soldier spends more time in his room. He can't begin to imagine how Rogers feels, or how best to comfort someone facing such a grotesque, surreal loss, on top of a series of even more grotesque, surreal losses, so he tries not to think about it. He sets himself tasks, instead, movements towards independence, clumsy attempts to become a full human being instead of a patchwork personality grafted onto a dead man.

Figuring out how to access HYDRA bank accounts takes a good week of solid concentration, too many mornings seen from the wrong side of midnight and teeth-grinding frustration as he tries to jump start his brain into remembering the right sequences, the right channels. He always did it physically, before, back in the golden days of Townsend and Murray, and the learning curve for bullying his way in online is insult to injury. But, when he finally succeeds, the reminder that he can still rely on his own wits rather than Rogers's benevolence makes him feel good. So does sending a substantial donation to some of the military charities he saw posters for in the VA building. He texts a screenshot of the receipt to Wilson with the caption: _how pissed off do you think this would make HYDRA?_ Wilson's response has a lot of exclamation points, so he thinks he's done okay.

Rogers starts coming home less and less often; putting all of his energy into chasing rats, no doubt, but it seems as though he's refusing on-site first-aid or being less careful, because he often appears in the hall in the small hours of the morning, ghost-like, wearing battle wounds and bruises bright enough that the Soldier can see them from his bed as Rogers passes the doorway. Rogers seems to be sleeping, at least; he'll crash for twelve to sixteen hours afterward in some kind of healing coma. It isn't any of his business, the Soldier tells himself, until the day he accidentally catches Rogers re-breaking and setting his own fingers at the kitchen counter with a sort of detached methodical grimness. Sneaking back to his room, the Soldier wonders whether he should be concerned—whether he's allowed to be. If it was Wilson or Barton, he'd feel more comfortable with the twisting anxiety in his chest, but Rogers isn't exactly a friend. Rogers also isn't _not_ , though, so he texts Romanova ( _is rogers self-destructing yes/no_ ) and subsequently has to suffer through an instant-messaging-based debrief, but there's a wash of complicated relief when she sends her final terse reply: _I'm on it._ Rogers seems to improve.

At least until the missions dry up.

An administrative hurdle suspends Rogers's team from their obsessive HYDRA-hunting for two weeks, and there's no getting around it save time, but it makes Rogers climb the walls. The Soldier wincingly relates. It's almost like looking in the mirror at himself, not so much the last few months, but further back, those terrible gray days between cryostasis when he'd broken out and ran laps of the compound until either his legs or his brain shut down, the terror of being idle. On the tenth day, when he gets up at 0530 to find Rogers prostrate on the sofa, digging the heels of his hands viciously into his eyes, the Soldier drags him outside, their silent pact of avoidance be damned. He's so determined that he forgets the cane in the umbrella stand, where it's been living since the very instant he realized he didn't need it anymore to navigate the suite.

He'd been skeptical of his own stupid idea, but it seems to work: after half a mile, Rogers starts walking like a human being instead of a hurricane, and starts taking what might be his first deep breaths in about four days. When Rogers's shoulders finally slump a little out of their military-tense posture, the Soldier breathes a little easier himself. They don't speak until Rogers says, “Where are we going?”

The Soldier shrugs. “I hadn't thought that far ahead. We could go to the Smithsonian—” Rogers makes a face. “—or the Spy Museum—” Less of a grimace. “—or we can just fuck around until you get hungry.”

“I'm hungry _now_ ,” Rogers says, mock-belligerently, so the Soldier steers him into the first open coffee shop he sees. The Soldier prefers the atmosphere inside, with its loud music and clusters of bleary students, but he recently learned how sensitive Rogers's serum-enhanced ears are, and the pinched expression on Rogers's face tells him all he needs to know. There is, thankfully, a duck-infested park across the street. The Soldier nurses his rooibos until Rogers has finished inhaling three breakfast sandwiches like he hasn't eaten in days. Which, honestly—the Soldier wouldn't be surprised.

They're walking around the pond when Rogers reaches out admiringly to touch the white flowers drooping beside the path. The Soldier says, “It's dogwood,” out loud without thinking, and feels embarrassed when Rogers looks at him, as though he's opened up his chest and let Rogers see a little too deep.

“Oh,” Rogers says. He looks up. “People talk as if the only flowering trees around here were cherries. I guess I never noticed these were different.”

“They're fiddly as hell,” the Soldier says, Murray's voice in his head: _If the prissy things can catch a disease or an insect, they'll do it, the bastards. Waste of time_. Rogers's second glance is even more surprised, and it catches him in a raw place. “I do have space in here for things other than killing people, you know.”

“No, I know, I just didn't think you'd—” Rogers tries and discards several attempts before he says, “Be interested. It's not practical knowledge.”

“There isn't really such a thing as impractical knowledge,” the Soldier retorts. He doesn't have an excuse for why he adds, “But I just like flowers.”

Rogers doesn't quite _stare_ at him this time, but he's clearly waiting for an explanation. Bucky Barnes, the Soldier guesses, wasn't much into botany.

“One of my handlers used to,” he starts, and grimaces, turning away. Ducks floating in the water, far off, in the cat-tails. He tries a different tack. “Back when I was naïve enough to think they'd let me retire, I used to think about keeping a garden.”

“So,” Rogers says awkwardly, “You were—there was a time when—”

“I wasn't always that— _thing_ , the way you met me,” the Soldier says. He feels a shadow of the old fear in him, the staticky shriek of wrongness he felt on the bridge, on the road, in the chair, before they scraped it out of him—before it came back, sharper than ever, electric-hot, like he'd spark and burn if he dropped into the water. The rush of it when he dove anyway. “Between Zola and Pierce, things were. Okay.” He kicks a stone into the pond. “For a given value.”

“I was kind of wondering,” Rogers admits. “I honestly expected you to be—emptier. You've been recovering so well, I should've figured you had something to, um, to fall back on. Something you remembered. I mean, something that wasn't—”

“I get you,” the Soldier says. “But, no. I was off the leash for a long time. Since around the Kennedy assassination, I guess.”

Rogers looks at him sharply. “Did you...”

“No.” He bites down on an inappropriate laugh; he hasn't thought about that for a long time. Some of the hysteria still lingering. “I was there. But somebody shot him first.”

Rogers doesn't say anything for a hundred yards, and then: “I don't know whether to be glad you didn't do it or frustrated that it's still a mystery.”

That's about the size of it, the Soldier thinks. He should get _that_ on a tee-shirt.

 

☙

 

No one looks too closely at a one-armed man in Arlington.

Some kids stare, when he passes them, but they don't bother him. He just wonders what they're thinking when they look at him, one sleeve of his jacket tucked inside itself, no illusions. Are they confused? Do they see someone they know, some uncle or grandfather? Do they see a broken toy soldier? Their mothers turn their heads away politely, even as they're flicking up surreptitious glances through their eyelashes. The Soldier smiles, trying to make it gentle. See: I don't mind. No harm done. One of the mothers blushes. It makes him feel sad, for some reason. He looks away.

Memorial Day in Virginia; the cemetery is crowded. Most everyone seems to know where they're going, and he sticks out, glancing down at the map on his phone. He passes small toddling children in camo pajamas, and more than one three-legged dog, and women in sundresses curled up small before gravestones with very little space between their bracket of years. Every headstone has an American flag planted in front of it; a good few of them have flowers, wreaths, tokens. He sees pins, necklaces, action figures, photographs—even a bottle of whiskey and a half-full glass, the strong snap of it cutting through the overwhelming scent of cherry blossoms.

When he arrives, he thinks for a moment that he has the wrong grave—but, no, the cemetery app tells him he's in the right place. _Shit_ , he realizes, too late for it to matter: this is a famous site. He's taking a risk, coming here, showing his face.

The headstone is partially obscured by wreathes and flowers. Not nearly as many as Rogers's plot, which is almost buried under roses and toys and cards—inconvenient, that grave, but he supposes it's an uncomfortable thing, digging up the grave of a war hero, even if it's empty. Some of the pile is edging out onto the graves next door, only one of which he's interested in.

JAMES B BARNES  
SGT  
US ARMY  
WORLD WAR II  
MAR 10, 1917  
DEC 22, 1944  
PURPLE HEART  
HOWLING COMMANDO

“Hell,” the Soldier mutters. He shifts uncomfortably in front of the headstone, drags his hand down his face. He does the math in his head: twenty-seven. Older than Kidd had been in Bosnia, older than some of the STRIKE boys, but still just a baby, really. Dead in—well, at the bottom of the ravine, he supposes. If this boy has a grave anywhere, a real grave, it's below that boulder. What's left underneath it might be all that remains of the late lamented Sergeant.

He realizes he's rubbing at the side of his nose too hard, chafing the skin up raw. He stops, feeling disgusted with himself.

“Who the fuck were you, Barnes?” the Soldier demands. A child shrieks happily in the distance. He scuffs one foot across the grass. “Listen to Rogers, a person'd think you were a fucking saint. I bet you weren't. I bet you—where'd you go?” Something hot prickles behind his eyes. “Where'd you fucking _go_ , Barnes? Why'd you leave? Why'd I have to—why'd you leave me to—” His hand comes up to his face, reflex. He presses hard with a thumb and a finger, into the soft places. “Goddammit, why— _fuck_.”

He sucks breath through his teeth, hissing. It sounds like something in pain, so he presses harder, harder, until he feels it.

Is he _grieving_? For someone he's never met? For some shitty kid who fell off a train like an absolute cretin seventy years ago? Or maybe it's that he's angry. There's something cold and heavy in his chest, something that makes him want to take his fist to the gravestone, grind it into dust. But it wouldn't do any good, would it, desecrating the grave of—shit, and it's not even a grave, that's the bitch of it all; Barnes didn't get to go home, not really. Not unless the Soldier's carrying Barnes around inside him like a ghost, like a parasite hanging off some red bit of him, chewing away. Hitting nerves when he least expects it.

When he wipes his eyes and looks up, there's a young woman with an enormous bouquet, looking terrified. He startles, ashamed.

“I'm sorry,” she blurts. “I'm, um—I was going to leave these for him, but. Sorry.”

“Please,” the Soldier manages, and steps to the side, almost on top of Rogers's pile.

She scurries forward and places the flowers, kneeling, ballet flats under a yellow dress. For a moment, it feels shared: two people composing themselves in a cemetery. He wipes aggressively at his eyes, his cheeks, fuck, his _jaw_ ; looking at someone else's headstone so he won't have to look at—at that one. The hell is he even doing here, really. There's no one there.

There's no one there.

He's almost convinced himself to walk away when the girl says again: “I'm sorry.” She looks up at him from the grass, clear-eyed. He feels like a great bawling infant beside her. “It's just—you look a lot like him. Are you related?”

He almost laughs; stops himself.

“Yeah,” he says. He clears his throat. “Distantly.”

“Strong genes,” she says, a little bolder. No apologies. “I, um. For a long time, nobody was leaving flowers or anything, so I started bringing—it seemed like, y'know, the right thing to do. Looks like he's got lots now, though.”

“Well, Rogers,” the Soldier says. When people come back from the dead and walk around, it makes the world pay more attention to history, he supposes.

The girl nods, twisting the hem of her dress in her hands. She stands up.

“Um,” she says, and visibly forces herself to meet his eyes. “I realize it's—that is, would you like to get some coffee?”

He doesn't laugh again, although he wants to. “Sorry, sweetheart, I don't swing that way. Unless coffee just means coffee.”

“Figures,” she says, eyes to the heavens. “I sure know how to pick 'em. Plenty folks think these two were, well.” She offers her hand towards the graves, queenly.

It catches him off-guard. Rogers? _Really_? He can see it, maybe, in the series of complicated emotions that had crossed Rogers's face when the Soldier asked if Barnes was queer, in the way Rogers talks about Barnes like the sun shone out of his ass, in how careful he is, but. Yikes. If Rogers was really _in love_ with Barnes—that's too sad a thought for him to handle today. “And what do you think?”

She shrugs broadly, pursing her lips. “Love's always nice to think about. I guess I see their point, on account of I'd do just about anything for my best friend, but I draw the line at parachuting into a war zone for her. Maybe Cap's just braver than most of us.” She crosses her arms. For a long moment, they both look at the ridiculous mound of flowers, and then she turns to him. “Coffee? Just coffee. Seems like you could use one.”

He tells her his name is Luke, which isn't the worst thing he could have come up with off the top of his head, but it still hurts like an old bruise. She kindly doesn't comment on his hesitation when he says it, or ask about the tube emerging from under his jacket, or how he lost his arm. Her name is Emmylou—“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, call me _Em_ , for pity's sake—” and she's writing her dissertation on particle scattering in loop quantum gravity. The Soldier doesn't think of himself as unintelligent, but he's several IQ brackets too stupid to understand it, even after her quantum-mechanics-for-babies breakdown, which involves straw wrappers and pilfered sugar packets.

In the middle of Em's impassioned rant about string theory, his phone rings. He scowls at the screen when he sees who it is.

“Oooh,” Em says. “I know that look. That's either persistent ex-boyfriend or overbearing mother-in-law.”

The Soldier barks a laugh. “Bit of both. Sorry, I have to take this.”

“Hey,” Rogers says. “I just got home and, uh, it looks like you haven't been in all day?”

“No,” the Soldier says. “I've been out.”

“Where are you?”

“Virginia.”

“ _Virginia—_ ”

Em glances at him; Rogers got pretty loud. The Soldier briefly considers throwing his phone into traffic. He looks across the street at the cherry trees, a blizzard of scattering petals. He sighs. “I'm not far, just over the river. By—” He stops himself just in time to avoid saying _your grave_ , which would be unnecessarily mean. Then, spontaneous: “You can pick me up, if it'll make you feel better.”

“Sure. Where are you—I mean, exactly?”

“Get here and I'll decide,” he says, and hangs up. He feels smug, strong; and then petty.

“Well, that sounded definite,” says Em, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling. One side of her rosebud mouth tilted up.

He grimaces. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess that's goodbye.”

Em reaches her hand across the table. “It was awful nice meeting you,” she says as he shakes it. “Take care, stranger.”

“You too,” he says, and leaves her on the patio chair with her ankles crossed in the sunlight, looking down at the sugar packets on the table, her fingertips resting on the handle of her mug. He turns the corner and then stops, considering, under a stunted dogwood that has no place living in the middle of a sidewalk. No, he thinks: he doesn't want Rogers to meet him here, not anywhere near those graves. But—hell. It's a good day for cemeteries, after all.

He texts Rogers where to meet him, and starts looking for a florist.

He's only been waiting five minutes at the gates when the Harley roars up. For anyone else, it might look like a guy trying to prove something, a quarter-life crisis, but Rogers doesn't seem like the type to seek affirmation from anyone; Rogers might be the person with the least amount of guile he's ever met. The Soldier watches the usual proceedings, kickstand-helmet-keys, and wishes he had a cigarette. His fingers twitch around the bouquet: yellow roses, baby's breath, generic and inoffensive. Strong, though. He'll stink of roses for a week.

He suppresses a sigh when Rogers comes closer. Rogers hasn't been home in three days, and it's more obvious than usual what he's been up to. A huge, mottled contusion starts in his hairline and covers the left side of his face, turning yellow on his neck where it's starting to heal. His left eye is almost theatrically bloodshot. If the Soldier had to guess, it looks like Rogers lost a game of chicken with a truck. He'd bet money on how far down Rogers's side those bruises go.

The Soldier pointedly doesn't bring it up, and if Rogers is perplexed by the locale or the flowers, he doesn't ask. In fact, he says not a word as they walk, passing under stands of oak, through dappled sunlight. The Soldier checks his phone—no app, not for this cemetery, but they're in the right section. He finally finds the grave by two elms, twisting sharply to the left from some long-ago series of windstorms, hunched old men turning their backs. The headstone is the newest by far, compared to its companions, and it's been kept immaculately clean. Somebody loves you, he thinks.

ELIZABETH MABEL HARRISON  
1958-1992  
"ENOUGH OF SCIENCE AND OF ART  
CLOSE UP THOSE BARREN LEAVES  
COME FORTH AND BRING WITH YOU A HEART  
THAT WATCHES AND RECEIVES."

“The really ironic thing,” he says wearily, “Is that they moved me to the bank vault in—it must have been '93, '94. She could've been close to home.”

Rogers shifts beside him. After a minute of uncomfortable, respectful silence, Rogers takes the bait. “You knew her.”

“My mechanic.” He hits his ribs with his stump. “Guess Pierce decided she was too much of a liability.”

“Because—she was a woman?” Derisive, like Rogers doesn't want to suggest there's people in the world who could think like that.

“Because she treated me like a human being.”

“Oh,” Rogers whispers, as the Soldier kneels down and places the roses against the stone. “Oh, god. Did he make you—”

“Probably,” the Soldier says. He feels oddly hollow. “Not too clear on the nineties.”

“I'm sorry,” Rogers says.

The Soldier almost strikes out, almost shouts: fucking hell, Rogers, you think that helps? She's dead, she's dead in her grave, it's good odds I killed her, the last thing she saw was probably my ugly goddamned face, sorry's not going to fix it—and then he lets it go. He thinks Rogers sees it, though, the anger leaving him. There's a moment where they both could call the other out: I see you backing down, I see you showing your belly. A peak of tension climbs; dissipates. The moment passes. It doesn't matter.

“You would've hated her,” he opts to say instead. “She was HYDRA to the core. Believed in the missions. Made the killing more efficient.”

“I can like individuals without condoning their ideologies,” Rogers says. He looks at the ground. “I liked and respected people I found out later were HYDRA, and after the leak—there were a lot of people who _weren't_ HYDRA who were doing awful things. Brainwashing trials, experimental surgeries, weapons manufacture...”

“Like us.” Roger's gaze snaps to him. The Soldier moves his hand, gesturing accidentally towards the grave, and then, clarifying: into the space between their bodies. “We're weapons. We were made to hurt people.”

“We're more than that, though,” Rogers says quietly.

It's the Soldier's turn to look away.

“Doing bad things for bad people doesn't always mean someone's a bad person,” Rogers says after a minute. “It's not that black-and-white. It's—more like a spectrum.” He fans out his hands in front of him, and then drops them to his sides. “I don't like to think there's anyone who can't be redeemed.”

The Soldier levers a skeptical look up at Rogers. “Even Pierce?”

Rogers grimaces. “Maybe there's...some people who _shouldn't_ be.”

The Soldier gets to his feet slowly, under the elms, in the sunlight.

“I can't help wondering what might've happened if Murray hadn't got himself killed,” the Soldier says, surprising himself. Rogers cocks his head. “I mean, don't get me wrong, he wasn't good at his job. He put a lot of agents in harm's way. Great with morale, shit at organization. Scraped by on a lot of missions with bad intelligence, murdered a guy and tried to pin it on me, authorized experiments on the STRIKE boys without any say-so from above, didn't really ever think about consequences. But he respected the staff, and he wouldn't have—” He grunts; makes a dismissive gesture.

“Pierce was a psychopath,” Rogers says, tight. “He tortured you, had—dozens, probably hundreds of people killed. He was going to commit _genocide_.”

“If anybody was the torture guy, it was Zola.” A cold feeling crawling up his spine. He tilts his head down and his shoulder up to hide the shiver, and pushes through. He wants to get the weight of this out of him. “He wasn't a sadist, he was...more of a purist, I guess. Wanted to know how things worked and why they didn't, wanted to make sure his miracle child was still functioning. My pain was totally irrelevant. As long as he didn't have to deal with it, it didn't matter. Pierce was...” The Soldier taps his temple. “He just wanted results.”

Rogers breathes out through his nose, hard. The Soldier finds, for once, that he can't read his expression. Rogers is normally so transparent; he wears everything on his face. And then, abruptly, there's something anguished rising up through the skin.

“How can you—” Rogers cuts his eyes away. Looks back, softer, hurting. “You talk about them like they were just jerks you met once on the subway. Not—not like—they were _monsters_.”

The Soldier shrugs. “Got their comeuppance. You know, Pierce's biggest mistake was breaking me? If he'd had a little more vision, got his head out of his ass and learned what I could do when I wasn't empty, let me use my brain, they wouldn't have failed. Townsend and Murray—I was loyal like a dog, for them. If Pierce'd used that, I would've been on the bridge of IN-01, watching the world burn for him.”

Rogers looks pained.

“I'm glad,” the Soldier says. “I'm _glad_ , Rogers. The reality we're living in right now? Where a few million good people aren't dead? That's the right one. The right things happened. Pierce dug his own grave and I was the shovel. He set up his own fall. Let me have that. Let me have my fucking meaning. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Rogers murmurs. It sounds more like surrender than agreement when he says, “All right.”

The ride back is tense and awkward, at least from the Soldier's perspective; he can't tell from contact whether Rogers is equally uncomfortable. His arm clutched tight around Rogers's waist, the closest they've been since that terrible argument. He's thinking about Em saying: _Plenty folks think these two were, well—_ and Rogers's fathomless grief for Barnes. It's not as if the Soldier hears Rogers weeping in the night or anything, but the Soldier recognizes the tar-pit misery when he sees it, even though Rogers tries to hide it under a layer of detachment and SHIELD-sanctioned violence. Is Rogers just that easy to read, or is Barnes whispering in the Soldier's ear? There, something in him says: that's what it looks like when Rogers is bereft, that's what he was like when his mother died, that's what he was like after Barnes went pitching out of a train into the snow. He hates that Rogers's grief feels more familiar than his happiness. The deja-vu feeling can go fuck itself, if that's the kind of thing it wants him to remember.

What he does know for sure is that someone's trying to get ahold of Rogers for more than half the trip, because he can feel Rogers's cell phone buzzing in his pocket every time they stop. The Soldier guesses it's Romanova being a pest. When they get in and Rogers throws his phone on the counter, still buzzing, the Soldier sneaks a peek and confirms his suspicion. He smiles where Rogers can't see him. It's good to know _somebody's_ after Rogers for his recklessness.

The landline rings, and Rogers, in the hall, swears.

“She'll stop bugging you if you pick up,” the Soldier says reasonably, as Rogers stalks over to the phone with his face like a thundercloud.

“Quit it,” Rogers snaps into the receiver. “I know, I know, but I'm fine, I'll put some ice—what?” In the span of five seconds, Rogers goes sheet-white. He repeats: “ _What?_ ” The Soldier edges over, honestly wondering if he'll need to try to catch Rogers on the way down.

He's close enough to hear Romanova say, tinnily: “Go turn on the news.”


	7. we need a voice to call across the water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rogers reels them back together so they're standing shoulder to shoulder. Their bodies towards the windows, like they're waiting for dawn. Rogers squeezes the Soldier's hand before he drops it, turning to look at him.
> 
> “Hey,” Rogers says. “It's gonna be okay.”
> 
> “Hey,” says the Soldier. “I almost believe you.”

Steve flinches at the touch on his elbow. Warmth, at his side, too close. James's mouth moves but Steve can't understand. The rush of blood in his ears. He says: “What?”

“I said,” James says, exaggeratedly slow, as though he's talking to a simpleton, “Don't punch the television. We might want it.”

Steve's so pissed he can't see straight. Priya loves Gothic novels where the protagonists are always putting belladonna in their eyes to make them look watery and huge: that's how he feels, like there's poison under his skin making the world throb. He wants something to fight, but there's nothing to fight except James, who's looking at Steve with an expression so neutral it has to be composed. A mask.

“Are you _seeing_ this?” Steve demands, gesturing at the TV, where an artfully blurred HYDRA agent is telling the world about his old pal, the Winter Soldier. His accent is just off Midwestern, inoffensive, with the smooth edges of a twang that might be pleasant to listen to at literally any other time. The newscaster is leaning, ghoulishly, further and further out of her chair.

James laughs. He takes off his backpack and drops onto the sofa like his strings have been cut, grinning at the ceiling. Steve gapes at him and says, “The hell is wrong with you?”

“Sweetheart,” James says, and laughs again. “What else can they do to me?” His lips, twitching. Something not quite right about his eyes. “They took my rights, my brain, my body, my _whole fucking life—_ ” This last a shout; Steve jumps. “And now they've managed to take my morning walks. Laugh, Rogers! It's funny!”

“It's not; you've lost your goddamn mind,” Steve says. “I'm gonna—” and the blurry man says, “Oh, yes, here in DC! Living with our resident superhero, Captain America.”

“ _Really_?” says the newscaster.

Steve snarls, “Son of a bitch.”

Behind him, the phone begins to ring.

 

* * *

 

They eventually have to unplug the landline and turn off Rogers's cell; somebody's managed to find the number for that, even, which the Soldier is vaguely impressed by. All of five people in the world have the Soldier's number, so he's the one getting Romanova's status updates and her demands for a media head-count every five minutes. Finally, he texts her: _I've stopped counting._ She tells him to stay away from the windows. The shouting outside becomes deafening. Rogers, itching for a throw-down and convinced that one brave soul will inevitably break down the door and start a journalistic exodus, is out in the hall with his shield and a grim-unto-death expression. There is, the Soldier realizes belatedly, a helicopter landing on the roof.

“No,” Rogers is saying when the Soldier cracks the door a minute later. “Evacuate the rest of the building if you think anybody's in danger, but I'm not leaving. I stayed when Peg told me off, I stayed when the street flooded, I stayed when my boss got murdered in the parlor, and I'm not damn well leaving now.”

“Nobody says parlor anymore, Rogers, get with the times,” says Romanova. The Soldier breathes a sigh of relief and comes out into the hall. She looks past Rogers and raises her eyebrows. “And you're not just making decisions for one, anymore.”

“If he's not going, neither am I,” the Soldier says. Rogers, turning, looks surprised. “I'm not scared of them.”

“You sure about that?” Romanova says. “Some white nationalist group already managed to decrypt classified sections of the HYDRA data-pack. They're arguing that you're a ward of the US government and should be pressed back into active service. For the good of America.”

“I'll show them the good of America,” Rogers mutters darkly. Romanova puts her hand over his mouth.

“Building's been agents-only since last August,” she says, ignoring Rogers's muffled noise of offense. “You're not putting anybody in harm's way by staying. On the other hand, I can have you two in a safehouse outside Kangiqsujuaq by 5:00. Your call.”

The Soldier looks at Rogers. Romanova's hand is still hiding his mouth, but Rogers's face is as eloquent as ever. “We'll be fine,” the Soldier says.

“Your funeral,” Romanova says, and the Soldier says, “Does that mean you'll bring me lilies?” and Rogers throws up his hands and goes back inside. Once the Soldier's satisfied that Romanova's satisfied—and once he has a tally of the agents being deployed on all the entrances—he goes in himself and bolts the door. Rogers is still in the hall, shield hanging off-kilter from his arm, rubbing at his forehead. He looks, in the half-light, like a very old man.

“You're angry,” the Soldier observes.

“I've been through this song and dance a few times,” Rogers says. He looks up wearily. “It never really ends well. Why aren't you taking it seriously?”

“Why makes you think I'm not?” The Soldier comes over and tugs the shield off of Rogers's limp arm, leaning it against the wall. “Rogers,” he says, and gets, for the first time in a long while, Rogers's full attention. It's a little disconcerting. “We're capable of defending ourselves, we have powerful friends, and you're Captain America. Yeah, it sucks, but it's the news—next week, some celebrity's going to have a wardrobe malfunction or a political leader's going to say something really dumb on the internet, and they'll forget about this.”

The corner of Rogers's mouth comes up. “I wish I had your confidence.”

“I wish I did too,” the Soldier says. “I'm contractually obliged to say shit like that, or else I'll have ten consecutive panic attacks and live in the linen cupboard for the rest of my life. Of course I'm taking it seriously, you idiot, but if I don't laugh about it I'm going to fucking cry.”

Rogers's face does something incredibly complex.

The Soldier sighs. “That's something Barnes would've said, isn't it.”

“Pretty much...dead on, yeah,” Rogers says, sounding frayed. He clears his throat. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” the Soldier says. They stand beside each other, looking in different directions, halfway to farce. He's seen this in a movie once, he's sure. Barnes's ghost between them doesn't feel as painful as it usually does, not with Rogers trying so hard not to bring it up. Rogers has been trying _so hard_ , the Soldier realizes; he's taken it for granted, the invisibility of effort. Now that the truth is out between them, this little moment of grief and confusion feels—almost normal. Awkward in a human way, like tripping over a shoelace or knocking on the wrong door.

A knock at the real door saves them from themselves. Rogers clears his throat again and goes to answer it. Hill elbows her way in, glowering. Not at them in particular, he doesn't think. More like the whole world in general. She's wearing a vibrant sundress, a battered old leather purse, a fake flower in her hair, and lipgloss, the combination of which makes her, if anything, more terrifying than usual.

“So this is fun,” she says. “How do you feel about an extended vacation to Greenland?”

“Same as we did when Nat asked ten minutes ago,” Rogers says. “Poorly.”

“Then you're taking a no-comment approach to life. Welcome to Hermit Town, population: you. If you need to leave, it's via the roof. Punch a baby agent if you want groceries. I've got concealed weapons rumors pinging from here to the White House, so if I see either of you on the street, I'll take pity on you and shoot you myself. I'll get you one of Stark's lawyers—”

“No,” Rogers says sharply. Hill raises her eyebrows. “Okay, maybe if it gets too hot to handle, but—Nat told you she caught Tony and Bruce trying to bring an omnipotent robot to life in the lab, right? I...said some words. Tony and I need to take a break right now.”

“Your attitude's a perpetual pain in my dick, Rogers,” Hill says, but she drops it. She digs around in her purse. “I managed to get a photograph of the informant. Recognize him?”

The Soldier doesn't have to subtract twenty years to recognize that jawline. “Agent Toland,” he says hollowly. “STRIKE Alpha in the eighties, maybe into the nineties. I think his first name was Ben.”

“His party line says as how you're dangerous and shouldn't be allowed to roam free in civilian areas.”

“Yeah, well.” The Soldier hands her back the photograph. “He always hated me.”

Hill crumples it up and tosses it in her purse. “There's an easy way to get ahead of this, you know. Take Toland out at the knees. You're on the Wall of Valor.”

Rogers, when the Soldier checks, looks as baffled as the Soldier feels.

“You know? The Wall?” Hill throws her hands up in the air. “The SHIELD martyrs? Ye illustrious dead? Everybody who died in the line of duty? _James Barnes_. He's the first name on the Wall. He's one of the founders of the SSR and a goddamned war hero. If you want to use him, it'll help—everybody loves the underdog, and right now you could use all the good press you can get.”

The Soldier looks at Rogers, who's already looking at him. “It's your call,” Rogers says tightly, but the Soldier doesn't agree; doesn't think that at all. If anyone has the rights to Barnes's memory, it's Rogers, who knew him and tried to die for him and loved him, in one way or another. It's not a decision he feels qualified to make.

 _What would you have wanted, Barnes?_ he asks himself. Asks whatever dregs of Barnes are left in him. Barnes was a soldier, he knows, but the internet tells him Barnes was drafted: not necessarily a patriot, then, even if he was a hero. Not like Rogers, who tried to enlist over and over, who fought tooth and nail until he was taken up. But Barnes had sisters, and the Soldier's intuition—and Rogers's stories—give him the feeling Barnes wasn't a coward or a cad. Worked on the front lines with Rogers during the war, him and that beautiful Johnson rifle keeping their men safe from harm. Barnes, the Soldier thinks, probably wouldn't object to the use of his name for a good purpose. But Barnes—hell.

Barnes must be so tired.

“Let him rest,” the Soldier says to Hill, shaking his head. “Let the poor bastard lie. At least he died for something that mattered.”

“Really? Because the way I see it, he died for nothing,” Rogers says.

So much for 'your call.' _There's_ a vein of untapped bitterness the Soldier wasn't expecting to hit. Rogers and his endless fucking minefields. He doesn't want to have this argument in front of Hill, but he can't let bullshit of this caliber slide.

“Way I see it, he died saving your life,” the Soldier counters, jabbing Rogers in the sternum with his finger. Which is a mistake: _ow_. “And don't you dare tell me that doesn't matter, because it meant you lived long enough to save _my_ life. So I figure the three of us are even.”

Rogers looks, for a moment, as though he's going to throw a punch, and then he murmurs, “Excuse me,” and does just that.

Goddammit.

“So, he's not okay,” says Hill, after a heavy pause.

“Of course he's not _okay_ ,” the Soldier says. “The fuck do you have oversight for if nobody noticed that? Rogers hasn't been okay since 1943.”

The Soldier leaves her to let herself out.

In the living room, the news is on mute, and Rogers is curled up on the sofa with his hands over his eyes. The Soldier, coming around to turn the television off, doesn't think Rogers is crying. Just profoundly overwhelmed. If Rogers did cry, though, he has a feeling it'd be as silent as this, which is a horrible thought he doesn't really know how to handle. He sits on the other end, facing Rogers, letting his neck go loose, leaning his head on the back of the sofa and closing his eyes. The noise died down outside briefly, the crowd dispersing or being intimidated into silence by the posted agents, but it's back up to full power now. A horn blares further down the street.

“When does it stop _hurting_?” Rogers mumbles into his palms. He sighs hugely. “I don't know why I'm asking you, of all people.”

The Soldier chooses to ignore that; Rogers is overwrought. “I don't think it ever does stop hurting,” the Soldier says, which makes Rogers lower his hands, covering his nose and mouth instead. “I think maybe it hurts a little less, but it doesn't ever stop. If it stops—then you've forgotten. Right?”

Rogers looks at him for a minute, and then hides behind his hands again. “Fuck, sorry,” he says. “That was vile.”

“S'fine.”

“It's _not_.”

“Fine, then, apology accepted,” the Soldier says. Rogers chokes out a little laugh. “Quit pretending you're not a total mess, Rogers, it makes the rest of us look bad.”

Rogers smiles, just a flicker, and looks outside. The Soldier follows his gaze, but he can't see anything special. No clouds in the sky, no birds. Just that very particular late-spring hazy blue, the thin blanket between them and all of space. When he looks at Rogers, Rogers is looking at him, and he nearly jumps. Blue out the window behind Rogers's head, and blue in his eyes. They're precisely the same color. For a moment, he's standing wind-whipped on a cliff above the ocean, red on his trembling limbs, but: blue above, blue below. Blue to every horizon. Struggling to remember what the color meant to someone who might have, once, been a human being. Zola coaxing: _Vill you come beck inside?_ Tar paper under his fingers and the sky above. Blue just like—

Boys, laughing.

Rogers's voice like a cattle prod: “What's wrong?”

The Soldier shakes his head, feeling as though he's encased in molasses. Rubs his eyes. Shakes his head again. “Nothing,” he says. “It doesn't matter. Do you want me to leave? Would it be easier for—you? For everyone?”

“No!” Rogers says. “No, I. Until the end of the line. I meant that, on the helicarrier. You remember?”

“You were saying it to him,” the Soldier points out.

“But you heard,” Rogers says, strangely earnest. “Can we pretend? If I knew, I can't say I would've—but if I'd known you were suffering—I like to think I would've tried.”

It'd be nice if it worked like that. “Yeah,” he says aloud. “Sure, but. Why?”

Rogers tries to smile. “I don't have so many friends that I can afford to lose one.”

It's an apology, of a sort, in a whole string of apologies Rogers shouldn't have to give. The Soldier could, maybe should argue it, but he won't. He says, instead of _thanks_ , “I hear you.” I hear you, he thinks, I heard you; I'll try to listen when you try to be kind. “I don't know how you come up with these things.”

Rogers looks relieved. “Ma and I used to do that,” he says. “The, um, pretending. It was kind of like a game. We'd say _backpedal_ and do it over again, and say what we should've.”

“She'd be proud of you.”

It seems like the right thing to say, safe and neutral and _regular_ , but he's taken a wrong step somewhere, strayed off the path into quicksand, because Rogers seems to shrink.

“I don't know,” he says. “She hated me fighting. She would've hated me joining up when I could've stayed out. She lost my dad that way. And everything I did after—” Rogers grimaces with one side of his face. “She always said tough times bring out true character. Even if she didn't show it—she'd be disappointed.”

“She'd have to be blind,” the Soldier says. “The whole world thinks you're a hero.”

“I don't. I do a job, just like everyone else.”

The hell kind of stupid-ass— “Rogers.” He kicks the nearest part of Rogers he can reach, which ends up being his shin. “I happen to agree with them, so shut the fuck up. That's my friend you're badmouthing.”

Rogers laughs and says, “Sorry,” not sounding it, but not sounding as miserable, at least.

“I know my opinion doesn't matter much—”

“It matters,” Rogers says. “It does. So. Thanks.”

The Soldier feels drained beyond words, but it's Rogers who falls asleep on the sofa despite the chaos outside, tucked up in the corner like a kid, his head bent sharply against a pillow. It looks uncomfortable. If it was the Soldier, he'd wake up with a stiff neck, but maybe Rogers is more flexible. Less connectivity in his joints; more forgiving muscles. The Soldier's never seen Rogers asleep, and he's a little disturbed by how young it makes Rogers look, the normally tense muscles of his face gone slack, his sharp edges softened into something so vulnerable it almost hurts. The Soldier's seen the boundaries of it before, catching Rogers in raw moments, but this is—he doesn't know if he likes it. The feeling it produces in him.

Rogers doesn't wake up when the Soldier gets off the sofa. He lays down under the window and edges his phone over the sill, taking a video of the crowd without, hopefully, being observed. Watching it back gives him the cold sweats. News vans line the road. He knows there's agents on the doors, and there are police officers lingering on the other side of the street, but the mass of humanity spilling across the sidewalk and into the road is alarming. He can't quite make out faces so far below, but it seems to him they're angry. He's projecting, maybe, but. Even the best agents don't stand a chance if the whole frantic crowd decides to run them down. If the police make an arrest, even one, things could rapidly snowball into ugliness.

Cringing in anticipation, he looks up the news.

At first glance, it isn't as bad as he expected. Much of the early material is neutral, simply reporting the facts as they've been received. Many are skeptical. Toland hasn't bothered to hide the fact that he's HYDRA, or used to be—the Soldier's unclear if Toland retired of his own free will, or was still on active duty when Insight failed—and several journalists are questioning his honesty, his motives, and his sources. But surrounding all of that, there's a thread of fearmongering and hysteria: thinkpieces debating the Soldier's humanity, articles suggesting he should be hunted down like an animal, Twitter threads demanding his arrest, bloggers saying they'll never feel safe in DC again. He wants to respond to all of them, to tell them he's a person, that he didn't want to do any of those things, that he was more scared then than they are now. He hopes none of them will ever be that scared. Not even the worst of them.

Exhausted and demoralized, he doesn't make a decision to stay on the floor so much as he dozes off by accident, only realizing he's done so when Rogers shakes him awake, close to sunset.

Neither of them particularly wants to be alone, not with night falling and the crowd beginning to settle in outside, associates bringing tarps and tents for those stubborn souls determined to wait for an appearance, whatever the cost. The Soldier takes about as long to one-handedly peel an onion as Rogers does to chop one, so they have a half-assed assembly line going. The Soldier doesn't know how he's going to help when Rogers gets to the peppers.

Both of them flinch every time an especially loud shout echoes outside. The Soldier is on the verge of breaking down and begging Rogers to put some music on, a movie, anything to drown it out, when someone starts singing in the street below. The Soldier's grateful, for a moment—anything's better than the yelling—and then more voices join in, and the Soldier thinks he hears the words _Captain America_. Rogers swears and cuts himself.

“Ignore them,” the Soldier says. “Talk to me. Twenty questions. Whatever.”

Rogers takes his thumb out of his mouth and frowns at it critically. “Do you think there's an afterlife?” he asks suddenly, and the Soldier finds himself hoping it was the first thing that came to mind, not something Rogers has been stewing about for weeks. Thanks for the whiplash, Captain.

“I hope not,” the Soldier says. Rogers looks pained, but that might be the onions. “I've got a lot of angry people waiting for me, if there is.” He might regret asking, but he does anyway: “Do you?”

“I used to,” Rogers says. “Now, I don't know. I find it hard to believe that people just—stop, though. It seems like such a waste.”

“Em said something about that,” the Soldier says. Rogers raises his eyebrows. “This quantum physicist I met in Ar—a coffee shop.”

“Where do you find these people,” Rogers says, almost admiringly.

“She said,” the Soldier continues, ignoring him, “That information never really gets destroyed. She said it can get distorted, or change form, but energy doesn't just disappear. She was talking about atoms, I think, but. I guess I can see where somebody'd find that comforting.”

“You don't?”

“I do, I guess. It's just the thought of—” He fumbles the onion; manages to catch it, but not before it sheds papery skin all over the floor. “Changing. I mean, would I even know? Or would it be like,” he says, and stops himself from saying: _like waking up in the snow_.

“I thought I was dead, when they thawed me out,” Rogers says. “Just for a minute. I was in this white room, and there was white light coming through the window, and a baseball game on the radio I'd listened to with—and then the door opened.” Rogers laughs flatly. “It would've been okay. If heaven was like that.”

The Soldier swallows past a tightness in his throat. “Yeah, I—”

A rock comes crashing through the window.

The Soldier hits the deck. Not of his own volition; Rogers knocks him to the floor and makes like a human shield, curled over him, protecting his head. It's a little late for that—the Soldier smacked the back of his skull on the linoleum when he went down, his ears ringing unhappily. After a moment, he realizes it's not just his ears: the Joey's alarm is going off. He can barely hear himself when he says, “Rogers. Rogers, hey. It was a rock, I saw it. It's just a rock.”

Someone shrieks outside, a high yelp that cuts off abruptly. A moment later, a gunshot. It's the Soldier's turn to grab at Rogers, flailing and ineffectual. Rogers pins the Soldier's upper arm and the end of his stump and and says, “That's, that's SHIELD issue. Riot control air gun. Rubber bullets.” Rogers breathes out slow. Crawls off the Soldier and offers him a hand. “Somebody'll be up in a minute.”

The Soldier feels something rising up in him, squashes it out of habit, and then deliberately lets himself feel furious. He's done a lot of things, a lot of terrible things, but he's never thrown a _rock_ through somebody's window; it's absurd, it's childish, it's just— _mean_ , mean-spirited and little in a way he finds hard to understand, and doesn't want to try. Rogers, who'd been for the span of a moment almost his old self—or at least his less closed-off self—is drawn taut and moving fists-first, pacing like an animal in the hall. The Soldier fights the urge to see how hard he can throw the rock back.

There's a knock at the door while the Soldier's changing his long tube. The things are surprisingly resilient, but the edge of Rogers's shoe must have come down on it and twisted, because there's a badly creased kink near the pack. In his peripheral vision, he tracks Rogers showing the agent the rock, the broken window. The _click_ of the agent's camera phone. Red and blue strobing off the walls when they open the curtain.

“—couple of arrests,” the Soldier catches, and Rogers says “ _something-something_ restraining _something_?” The agent replies, “They'll be back tomorrow.” Rogers curses. The agent lets himself out.

When the Soldier looks up, Rogers is on his knees in the lamplight, long fingers placing shards of glass into a crumple of newsprint, the tips of his ears flushing red.

 

☙

 

“Oh good,” Rogers says, as the Soldier comes out of his room. He blearily glances over in time to see Rogers's face, just before he drops the curtain, illuminated not by the morning glow but by flashes of light. “The paparazzi are here.”

“Is that worse than reporters?” the Soldier asks.

“More persistent.” Rogers pauses. “Better telephoto lenses. Maybe stay away from the windows.”

“Pity,” the Soldier says. “I was dead set on dancing naked in front of them. The hell, Rogers, after last night's finale, I'm not planning on going within ten feet of the fucking things, you don't have to warn _me_.”

Rogers's lip twitches. “Pity.”

“So.”

“So.”

“Crowd hasn't dispersed, then?”

“Doubled, I think it's safe to say.”

“Fantastic,” the Soldier says, and opens a can of formula with more force than he really needs to.

Five minutes later, the door opens, which means either Romanova or Hill; Rogers gave Romanova two spare keys. It's Romanova's voice that calls out from the hall: “She followed me home, can I keep her?”

“Priya!” Rogers exclaims, and the flirty barista from the coffee shop comes into the kitchen, brandishing a tray of coffee cups and a canvas bag that smells of starch.

“Good thing Ms. Romanoff recognized me,” Priya says. “Thing One and Thing Two were trying to work out how to rugby tackle me to the pavement without actually touching me, poor lambs. Hell, Steve-o, what a shitshow!”

“I love you,” the Soldier says, as she passes him a huge take-out cup. Grinning, she tilts her jaw towards him and taps it with a bright yellow fingernail. He kisses her cheek obligingly.

“I like this guy,” says Priya to Rogers, who looks like he wants to dissolve into the floor even as he's devouring a breakfast bagel. “A+ dude, my dude. I figured you could use a pick-me-up, so. I am the Bringer of Carbs.”

Romanova accepts a cup with quickly disguised glee. She shoots a level look at Priya over the rim. “You know he's _actually_ the Winter Soldier, right? No mistaken identity?”

Priya snorts, a surprisingly gruff noise. “You know what makes a good food service minion? Great facial recall. I recognized him as soon as he walked in. I also noticed he was shy as fuck, missing an arm, half his hair, and about fifty pounds, plus he was carrying the same brand of lunch box as my little sister, if you catch my drift. So you tell me, Ms. Romanoff. _Is_ he the Winter Soldier? Really?”

“Zing,” Romanova mutters into her coffee. “Are you sure you wouldn't rather work for the government, Miss Ramesh?”

“I'll call you if I flunk my Class A.”

“Okay, Recruitment Officer Romanoff, you can stand down,” Rogers says. “What's the scoop?”

Romanova sighs. She holds up her right hand and starts counting off on her fingers. “Okay. We'll talk about how much trouble you're in later. We have two types of conspiracy theorists. The ones who think this is all a ruse to slander your good name, you never met the Winter Soldier, he isn't living in your home—and the ones who think you _are_ harboring a fugitive and this is more evidence you've been HYDRA all along.” Rogers makes a disbelieving noise. Romanova folds down another finger. “We've got media pundits having metaphorical fistfights—except for that real one—about why Captain America would shield the man who tried to assassinate him as a matter of public record. Right wingers are calling for immediate arrest and/or extradition and/or execution for both of you. The president's drawing criticism for backing you with the statement, and I quote, _Captain Rogers is a decorated veteran who has saved this country from catastrophe on numerous occasions. If he says the threat this operative poses has been neutralized, I say we may believe him_.”

“ _Says_?” the Soldier echoes. Rogers looks simultaneously obstinate and shamefaced, his shoulders coming up.

“He was out there at Ass O'Clock in the morning giving a statement,” says Priya, sucking the whipped cream off her drink. “Only reason I noticed is on account of some jerkwad pounding on the door for a cup of coffee. Made me burn my first batch of cinnamon buns.”

“People were keeping their kids home from school,” Rogers protests. “It's ridiculous, he's been here for _months_ , nobody's in any more danger today than they were last week. I couldn't take it. I said DC was safe. That's all.”

“It was a patriotic speech, not a pithy statement,” Romanova says. “You almost gave Agent Alvarez a heart attack, not to mention me.”

“Sorry,” says Rogers, not meaning it at all.

“I'll get my own back.” She pulls a rugged-looking cell phone out of her pocket and brandishes it at Rogers. “Speaking of which, Agent 13 says Carter's having an exceptionally good day. You should call her.”

The Soldier startles. Carter—Margaret Carter? The agent, the woman in the frame opposite Barnes's? Rogers hasn't mentioned her, and the Soldier'd assumed—hoped, given what happened with Barnes—that she was long dead, and just an old friend. _Friend_ might be a weasel word: Rogers, taking the phone from Romanova with a raw, unfinished expression, is already dialing as he walks into the living room. Priya and Romanova become very interested in the construction of Rogers's cupboards, pretending not to listen. The Soldier attempts no such thing. If Rogers wanted privacy badly enough, he'd have gone down the hall.

Rogers twists his bulk into the armchair, fiddling boyishly with a loose thread at the hem of his jeans while he waits. The Soldier can tell when he's been put through, because something in his posture releases, softening.

“Heya, Pegs,” Rogers says. Uh oh, the Soldier thinks: shallow waters. Rogers's voice is rough and warm, and for all it comes out deeper, he sounds a decade younger. He slurs his words together. “Huh? You saw—aw, hell, Pegs, they shouldn't've left that on, the footage is—”

Rogers clamps his mouth shut abruptly. He's quiet for a long time.

“Busted,” Romanova whispers. She raises her eyebrows impishly when the Soldier looks at her. In the living room, Rogers is saying: _Well, it's complicated—no, no, I shoulda—I didn't mean it like that, it's—it's legally complicated, it ain't my place to—_ and Romanova says, “In my professional opinion he's a closeted arachnophobe, but the only thing he'll _admit_ to being scared of is the lady on the other end of that call.”

The Soldier says, “Smart guy.”

Romanova shows all her teeth.

“Hey, uh, J?” Rogers says, and it takes a second for the Soldier to register it's directed at him. J for James, he guesses; it could be worse. “It's—it's just that Peggy knew Bucky, and—” The Soldier offers a thumbs-up; Rogers looks grateful. “Peggy? He says I can tell you. No, it's...not exactly. D'you remember, after Kreischberg? Bucky's debrief? How he was real cagey about what Zola'd done to him? We got the notes, it was—it was serum, Pegs. Yeah. Yeah, I know. But he survived the fall, and HYDRA found him again.”

The Soldier doesn't need to listen in to any more; he knows the rest. The last thing he hears as he heads for his room is: “—doesn't remember, he came back different—huh? No, that's fair, but _literally_ , he's a different person, he isn't—” The Soldier leans back against his headboard and breathes out through his nose, slow.

He leaves his door mostly open, so it doesn't surprise him when Priya edges in, some ten minutes later, with what he thinks is probably uncharacteristic hesitance. He pats the end of the bed with the bare sole of his foot. She obliges, sitting cross-legged, propping her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.

“So, I shouldn't have heard that, huh,” she says.

The Soldier shrugs. “Can't imagine it'll be a secret for very long, the way things are going. And Romanova didn't knock you out and drag you off to sign a hundred NDAs, so.”

“I think she likes me,” says Priya. “You know, she tried to set me up with Steve one time? She used to drag him into the coffee shop, like, once a week, way back when he first moved here and still looked like death on toast. I mean, guy was a wreck, and my orientation's no thanks, so you can imagine how well _that_ went over, but he kept coming in and asking these crazy questions even after Ms. Romanoff stopped bullying him into it. Like: when, if ever, is it socially acceptable to call a woman _ma'am_? When did men stop wearing hats? Why do cigarettes smell so bad nowadays? What's a data plan and why would I want one? Nobody gave that guy a basic orienteering class after they thawed him out and chucked him into the brave new world. I was so _pissed_.”

“Shitty way to treat a legend,” the Soldier says.

“Right,” Priya agrees. “I guess they just figured he'd adjust, which, okay, sure, he's a tactical genius or whatever, but that's got nothing to do with culture shock. Shit, I'm _from_ this century, and when we moved to the States, I was all...” She bugs her eyes out and mimes touristy wonder. “Americans have no cows in the streets! Like what the heck!”

The Soldier, surprising himself, laughs.

“Which reminds me, I owe you an apology,” she says. He blinks at her. “Steve asked for advice—anonymously, though, yeah? I didn't know the details or anything. I gave him what I still maintain were some pretty great tips about acceptance, but I also gave him some hella _bad_ advice re: pressuring you to remember stuff you evidently super-duper didn't want to. So, sorry.”

“You didn't know.”

“My parents always taught us to apologize for hurting somebody even if you didn't mean to.” Priya makes an exaggerated _what can you do?_ face and spreads her hands. “Not that I'm a goody-two-shoes or anything, but old habits, etcetera. Could be worse. My mom still reflexively namastes the postman.”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For being—” He gestures helplessly. “Rogers doesn't have many people in his corner. People who aren't superheroes, anyway. It's good of you.”

“Excuse you, I'm totally a superhero,” she fires back. “Anyway, what about you? You have anybody in _your_ corner?”

“I did,” he says. The skin around his eyes feels tight. And then: he remembers Wilson, and Barton, and Romanova, the last of whom is probably in the living room with Rogers right now, pestering him in the way that means: I care. “Yeah,” he corrects himself quickly. “I guess I do. You know Romanova's going to have agents on you all the time now, right?”

“There's already at least two undercover agents in the coffee shop,” Priya says. “Probably two or three more I didn't spot. Worry about you, my dude.”

“Sweetheart,” the Soldier says, “I rarely do anything else.”

 

☙

 

Priya leaves with Romanova. The Soldier startles out of a nap he didn't intend to take, and blinks awake in a shower that doesn't do much to make him feel less tired. He goes out to check the media situation with no small amount of trepidation. Rogers, who looks like he's fighting a battle of attrition with his phone, receiving new messages faster than he can delete them, favors the Soldier with one of those soft, open looks the Soldier hasn't seen since Rogers still thought he was Barnes. He finds himself smiling tentatively back.

“How was—Carter?” he asks, hesitating not so much over the name but what she might have been, what Barnes might have called her. _Peggy_ , he thinks, or certainly _ma'am_.

“Good,” Rogers says. “Well, angry. Sharon says it's a good thing she's not too mobile, or she'd be down here giving everybody what-for.”

“I like your taste in women, Rogers.”

To the Soldier's delight, Rogers turns pink. “I don't—” he protests, “We weren't—” and he covers his face with his hands.

“Sure.”

“I asked her to marry me, when I found out she was still alive,” Rogers says, not helping his case. He almost laughs. “It wasn't—I don't know what I was thinking. She said no. Said she wouldn't make me a widower before I turned thirty.”

“Probably for the best,” the Soldier says. “You'd have made a terrible husband.”

Rogers, taking it in the spirit it's been given, laughs for real. It's strained, a little tired, but they manage to share a grin before the seriousness of the situation comes rolling back down on them. The clamor outside lulls for several seconds. As if they're on strings, they both look towards the curtains, waiting: one window leaking light and the other dark, taped up with a garbage bag until it's safe to repair the broken glass. The Soldier hears Rogers swallow, the click of his throat.

“She said she was sorry,” says Rogers, as the noise picks up. “Pegs. For this, and everything else that happened to you. I think she was blaming herself, and I tried to tell her—”

“The pair of you,” the Soldier says, trying to tease and over-pitching into exasperation.

“—wasn't her fault,” Rogers is continuing, “But you came across her desk, kinda. Everything was such a mess in the fifties, she said. The Cold War. Operation Paperclip. Zola.” Rogers's face like a flinch, but backwards. “Some Soviet weapons transfer that should've raised red flags and didn't, but she was so busy, and she was pregnant around then, I think.” Sounding not so much like he's defending Carter as explaining it to himself. “They had bigger things to worry about than a weapon going missing in transit. It happens all the time, apparently,” and _there's_ the anger: “Did you know that? I looked it up. We lost a bunch of nuclear weapons. Bombs! In '50, '56, '61...”

“So they wouldn't have been stressing over,” the Soldier says, “A missing gun.”

“From the Soviets,” Rogers agrees. Flash of teeth. “That probably didn't work.”

“I don't think they were Soviets, exactly.” He can feel his mind trying to bat away his half-hearted attempts to remember. “I think,” he says, struggling over the wall even as it builds itself, trying to kick him out of his own head, “I mean—they were HYDRA. From all over. We all were; it was a real international affair. There were Germans around too. Famously,” he says, “Not really allies of the Russians, after the war. Right?”

“No,” says Rogers. Then: “ _We_?” and immediately he looks apologetic. “You don't have to answer that, if it's—”

The Soldier shrugs. “Zola's other subjects. There were...” He tries to count them and can't: their faces swim away. He feels faintly sick. “A bunch of us,” he says.

Rogers moves his jaw from side to side. “You say _were_. So.”

“No,” the Soldier says. “I was the only one who lived.” Almost a lie. He doesn't think too hard about the Nurse, who doesn't count, exactly: who was never a danger to anyone, unless it was in terms of bones set, bullets collected, syringes emptied. Secrets, maybe. Live for long enough, and people get scared.

“I'd like to say I'm sorry,” Rogers says. “But.”

The Soldier nods. He doesn't want to imagine the state of the world with a dozen Winter Soldiers in it, either.

“I still don't blame her,” Rogers says suddenly. “Peggy. For not looking into it. It was the times, it was a crazy time, it was a—a symptom, I guess, of a larger...”

“Disease,” the Soldier says, when Rogers tries and fails.

“It doesn't mean I can't still be mad that _somebody_ didn't,” Rogers says.

 

☙

 

Rogers starts stress-cleaning on the fourth day, right around the time some hotshot software engineer decrypts a video from the data-pack. One minute and forty-nine seconds of the Soldier in the chair, screaming. They don't release the footage on the news, but they do play a clip of the audio, and it sparks widespread debate over the Soldier's willingness to act under HYDRA's orders. Rogers had snarled, “It's _torture_ , it's not up for _debate_ ,” and had gone off to punch a wall, or something—the Soldier had been trying so hard to conceal his ballooning panic at hearing his own voice from the past, wailing like he was dying, that he'd blanked out until Rogers reappeared with a box of baking soda. The Soldier'd been wondering how long it would take him, honestly. On a normal morning, Rogers runs from one end of the city to the other, and the Army calisthenics he's been performing in his bedroom twice a day don't seem to be cutting it. The Soldier had previously assumed Rogers needed the exercise to maintain his science-enhanced bulk, but now he can't help thinking Rogers was pushing himself for other reasons. Rogers's exponentially increasing edginess can't entirely be the paparazzi's fault. Rogers doesn't ask for help and the Soldier isn't sure if he should offer, but he doesn't complain, either. The sound of the vacuum covers up some of the shouting.

Around midday, the Soldier gets a text from a number he doesn't recognize, and then another. A photograph of a smaller crowd on a different street, followed by a close-up photograph of Wilson's unimpressed face. A moment later: _so, turns out i had to get a new number_.

 _Rogers refuses to change his_ , the Soldier texts back. As if Rogers is psychic, the vacuum shuts off somewhere down the hall.

 _that's so typical_ , Wilson says. _but i figured when he didn't get back to me right away. you just can't catch a break, can you?_

The Soldier can't think of anything to say in response that isn't maudlin self-pity. He picks an appropriately grumpy-looking emoticon.

 _no kidding_ , Wilson replies. _hey, i'm bogged under like whoa, so i can't chat, but i wanted you guys to be able to get ahold of me if you need to, k? stay safe_.

 _You too_ , the Soldier says. Belatedly: _And thanks_.

He hears Rogers come into the room as someone shouts _Send him out!_ on the street below. Half a dozen voices pick up the chant.

“I feel like this should be illegal. Harassment, or whatever,” the Soldier says. _Send him out! Send him out!_

Behind him, Rogers sighs. “It probably is, but me and my team haven't exactly made friends with the police lately. Technically, I guess they can say it's freedom of speech and keep their distance.”

_Send him out! Send him out!_

“Funny,” the Soldier says, “How people only seem to evoke that right when they're being assholes.”

“You've been reading the comment sections again,” Rogers accuses. He continues, “So, I um,” and the tonal change is so radical the Soldier twists on the sofa to look at him. Rogers is holding—oh. “I know you probably meant to forget about it, but I didn't want you to find it later and wonder how it got mangled, so. I had to rescue it from the vacuum.”

The Soldier holds his hand out for the sketchbook, reaching stiffly across his body and up to Rogers's height. Rogers leans his forearms on the top of the sofa as the Soldier surveys the damage. He'd kicked it under the dresser, he remembers, during some portion of his—episode. Seven or eight pages are crumpled up where they were sucked into the vacuum, pulled partially loose from the binding. He smooths them out and checks the last pages, his sketch of the bed among them, but nothing is ripped into unintelligibility, just distorted.

“Does it bother you?” Rogers asks. Gesturing: “You being able to...”

“It did,” the Soldier says. He opens to a random page. Two dark-haired girls. A street corner. A gushing fire hydrant. “I don't know. It's.”

“Strange.”

“Uncomfortable,” he amends. “Like—like that woman who got hit on the head and started speaking in a French accent last month. It was in the paper.” Rogers nods. “Do you think she ever—people like her—” Reversing out of the spot he's parking himself, trying again. “They must feel like their body doesn't belong to them.”

“Yeah,” Rogers says. The corner of his mouth moving like he's trying not to smile. “I wouldn't know anything about that.”

The Soldier takes a breath to respond, and catches it just in time: Rogers isn't being facetious; Rogers does know. It's so easy to forget that Rogers was different, once. Not just different but changed, and radically so; he grew, what, nearly a foot? A hundred pounds? He would've had to relearn his own face in the mirror, relearn how to move his body. The Soldier's caught scraps of it, here and there, the way Rogers still tries, cat-like, to fold himself into too-small spaces when he's distracted. In a strange way, they're mirror images. Rogers's body mutating around him; Barnes's body invariant between its two passengers.

“Yeah,” he says unsteadily. “I, uh, guess you would.”

“I had it easier than you,” Rogers says, misunderstanding his hesitation. “I knew what I was getting myself in for. You and Bucky didn't get any kind of say in the matter, or any time to come to terms with it.”

“Did he,” the Soldier says; swallows. “Not cope well, then?”

Rogers huffs a laugh. “Not especially. Not that you could say any of us were at our best, then.”

Dangerous. The Soldier steers clear. “Did he draw? During the war,” he clarifies. “This is all,” tapping the cover, “From Brooklyn.”

“Yeah. I don't think you could stop Bucky doodling on things any more than you could stop him talking. He used to steal newsprint, napkins, sheets from the Typex—he'd draw on the tables if he didn't have anything else, it drove Colonel Phillips nuts.” Rogers looks...concerned isn't quite right, but it's a species of it. “Why do you—”

“It just,” the Soldier says, confused at his own roil of feelings, “It would've been nice to know that I could do this. Would've been good between missions, to, to keep my hands busy.”

Rogers's not-concern deepens. “But you don't want to. Now.”

The Soldier makes a frustrated noise and rubs the razor-prickled back of his skull. “Yes. No. Shit, I don't know, I'm not nearly as good at analyzing myself as you seem to think I am, Rogers. Why don't _you_ want to anymore?” Yikes: Rogers actually flinches. Carefully, testing how far he can push, “Don't tell me it was just a job, I saw pictures of that traveling exhibition, Captain America's Wartime Art or whatever the hell it was called, and none of those looked like professional work.”

“I hate that exhibition,” says Rogers. “It's one guy who owns all that crap, you know, he bought it off the people I gave them to, I wasn't trying to make some artistic _statement_ —”

“Earth to Rogers,” the Soldier says, pointing at himself: not the enemy. Rogers deflates with an apologetic wince. “It's just, I've got a pretty fucking good reason to feel conflicted about,” the Soldier wiggles his fingers, “But you liked it, and now you—don't.”

Rogers tries to smile. It's an absolute car-crash of an expression. “Last person I ever drew fell off a train,” he says. Shrugs. “Guess I figured I was done.”

The Soldier's mouth goes dry.

How long has it been since he thought about the ravine? The drawing in his pocket? The drawing he'd thought—he'd thought it was someone else, until they held it up to his face, mocked him with it. He'd tried to bite them when they took it. Later, touching his face in the stone room. Learning the lines of it, the planes and valleys, blind, years before he would see himself in a mirror: learning it from the ashes of a portrait. Someone had loved him, he thought. Someone thought he was—

“You, you drew him,” the Soldier says, turning; the sketchbook slides off his lap and onto the floor. He leans over, groping for it, not taking his eyes off Rogers. “You drew—when? Did you give it to him? How long before—”

“Just a few hours,” Rogers says. “We drew each other, actually, we were bored to tears, waiting for the radio call in the tent, and I had a—why?”

“Do you have yours?” the Soldier demands.

Rogers doesn't answer, just leaves; and when he comes back it's with a long manilla envelope in his hands, bulging with something more than papers. He sits on the other side of the couch and dumps it out between them. Buttons on a thread, a comb, something that looks like a wallet and turns out to be an ancient accordion-style camera, small enough to fit in a pocket. Oh, hell, the Soldier thinks: these are Barnes's things, whatever he didn't have on him when he fell. Something metal hits the Soldier's foot. Even as he's picking it up, he realizes what it is, and recoils. Rogers keeps his own dog tags with Barnes's effects. Like they're both dead.

Rogers picks up a sheaf of papers to reveal something wrapped in lumpy foil. The Soldier doesn't have to touch it to know what it is: a square of chocolate so old it's probably mummified. For a single shuddering moment, like jumping feet-first into a lake, he's back in the ravine, in the snow, his dead arm under the rock and his live one rifling through his pockets, searching with something that must have been Barnes's memories, finding only the chocolate and the drawing. Stuffed in the same pocket like Barnes didn't care about it getting stained. Wouldn't have cared; Rogers and Barnes must have made dozens of drawings of each other. It wouldn't have been special. Barnes didn't know it would be the last.

“Here,” says Rogers.

Unlike Barnes, Rogers has kept this one safe, pressed between two thin pieces of cardboard, although it has soft old lines where it's been folded. Barnes's portrait of Rogers is more compelling than it is flattering; Rogers is squinting, caught in between expressions, in movement. Barnes apparently developed an almost cartoony style during the war, much looser than the last Brooklyn sketchbook, where his subjects were solid, heavy. Rogers looks as though he's about to spring into motion or float off the page. A side effect of Barnes learning to draw quicker, maybe, in unpredictable situations. Between battles. Under fire.

His hand, the Soldier realizes, is shaking.

He's angry. Not just mad: incandescent. It'd been for so long the only thing he'd thought of as his, the spark, the flower in the wasteland. A touchstone. He had effected someone without killing them, without killing one of theirs; he had struck someone as worthy of putting down on paper. He had been things other than death.

A wash of shame, then. He's furious at Barnes for taking yet another thing from him, while here he is, _alive_ , alive and free, while Barnes rots—or wanders, whatever's more horrifying—and Rogers almost has it worse, losing everything he ever knew, numbed again and again by a loss the universe keeps shoving in his face, bringing something back only to reveal it's just a shell, Barnes's animated corpse walking around with some other bastard inside of it, and nothing to grieve over. An empty grave. A box of garbage. An age-speckled photograph in an oval frame.

The Soldier drops the drawing before he can harm it, pressing a thumb and two fingers against his closed eyelids, clenching his teeth.

“What?” Rogers says. “What is it?”

“I took it out of my pocket,” he says. He feels Rogers freeze. “On the first day. Near sundown. I was taking out the,” he says, gesturing with his stump, “The chocolate, I was hungry. And I found it. I didn't know it was me. Not until later, when the Germans burned everything, they. All the—letters and things, from my pockets. His pockets. And your drawing. One of them held it up to my face before he—I was,” he laughs, “Upset. It's funny. I knew where Barnes's food was, and I was angry when they burned the drawing, but I can't remember—you. Giving it to me. Or,” he says, swatting the portrait, “Drawing this.”

Rogers says, very gently, “Nobody's expecting you to—”

“Well, maybe _I am_!” the Soldier shouts. Jerking away from the loudness of his own voice. He puts his hand back over his eyes. “I just thought maybe, if I saw it, I could—remember something. For you.”

“No!” Rogers says, aghast. “No! Why would you do that to yourself? You _hated_ it when I tried to get you to remember. You said you didn't want to be him.”

“I don't, I'm not.” Too blunt: “He's dead. But I was,” the Soldier says. He sounds desperate. He feels desperate: to be understood. Breaking all of his fucking rules. “I _was_ him. He's in here somewhere, or used to be, or I wouldn't have known which pocket the chocolate was in, I went right—” Patting his hip. “Right for it. Something carried over. I talked—I guess. I talked like him, for a little while. After.”

“Don't,” Rogers says. “Don't.”

“I thought it would be nice. Something I could give you in return for—you're putting up with all of this, for his sake, and all you have is this box of shit he didn't even—”

“You're my friend,” Rogers grates out. Something inside the Soldier goes still and quiet. “If I wanted something of Bucky's I'd go around lifting up big rocks in the Alps.” At whatever expression of disgust creeps onto the Soldier's face: “Yeah, that, see? That's how it feels. Don't—torture yourself like that. For me. Look,” Rogers says, suddenly savage, “You want to acknowledge the elephant in the room? Fine. You're just like him. You charm the hell out of everybody you meet, and you're funny as hell, and you pretend you're stupid but you're a whole lot smarter than me. You remind me of him every day. You're two of the best people I've ever known.”

“I'm an _ass_ to you,” the Soldier protests, even as he's failing to crush the warmth blooming under his ribs.

“You think Bucky and I _weren't_?” Rogers says. “When we were kids we'd play out H. Rider Haggard stories on the roof, and there was always a battle over who got to be Quatermain, at least until Becca suggested maybe Quatermain had a twin brother who was equally dashing. We fought over movies. We fought over politics. We fought at my Ma's funeral. There wasn't much,” Rogers says, laughing, “That we didn't fight about. We brought out the worst in each other and then we tried to be better. That's why we were such good pals, I guess. You've got to trust somebody a lot to know you that well.”

“We don't,” the Soldier says. “Know each other very well, I mean.”

“Yeah, well.” Rogers shrugs. “We're a work in progress.”

It startles a laugh out of him. “Truer words,” the Soldier says, and gets a watery grin from Rogers in exchange. Rogers, the Soldier realizes, wouldn't have said those things if Barnes was around; Barnes would've called him a sap, probably, and shoved him. The Soldier has the impression they had a very rough-and-tumble, physical friendship, wrestling and insults, the way Rogers kept trying to reach out and touch the Soldier during those first unsettled weeks, the way he was delighted whenever the Soldier mouthed off. So this: this is just for the Soldier. Barnes's ghost isn't hovering over his shoulder, putting his cold fingers on the Soldier's neck, reminding him that he's a pale imitation of the original. It makes him feel bold.

“So tell me something,” the Soldier says, “About yourself. Something horrible, and we can fight over it. Or a secret, maybe,” when Rogers leans forward intently, eyebrows rising, and he adds impulsively: “Not about him. Something you never told him.”

Rogers opens his mouth to reply, and maybe he's about to spill something crazy, or maybe he's about to say there weren't any secrets Barnes didn't have, but the Soldier'll never know, because someone turns the key in the lock and they both startle like they've been caught out at something embarrassing. Rogers's ankle sends his dog-tags clattering to the floor, followed more sedately by a few drifting papers. The Soldier bends to pick it all up, fuming, as Rogers swings himself over the back of the sofa.

“Natasha,” Rogers says, as Romanova comes in. She's trailed by a bearded young man who looks like a civilian and probably isn't, despite his casual clothes and duffel bag. Emerging from his left cuff is a three-pronged prosthetic hand.

“Boys,” she replies, shooting an incalculable look at Rogers's crossed arms and the Soldier's badly-concealed glare. “Would you like good cop or bad cop?”

“I have a feeling we're getting both,” says Rogers.

“Clever clogs,” she says. “We've received a serious bomb threat that we can't ignore. I told you both I'd let you make your own mistakes, but I'm reserving the right to take one rein on this. You can either vacate immediately, or Agent O'Malley here can take a mold of,” she gestures at the Soldier, “Your face, so we can make a mask and set him up as a decoy. You'll appear to be making tracks while Steve's announcing your disappearance.”

“What's that going to do to his image?” Rogers asks.

“Bomb?” the Soldier says.

“It can't get much worse,” says Romanova. “No, really,” to Rogers's noise of protest. “Overall tone's on an upswing, now that there's disputation about intent, and you stating that he's done a runner to protect you...”

“It'll skew positive at the right time,” Rogers says, sighing.

“ _Bomb_?” the Soldier repeats. They all look at him. Agent O'Malley is the only one wearing an expression that might be construed as concerned. O'Malley is the Soldier's new favorite. “Are we just not going to address that?”

“There won't be a bomb,” Romanova says, “If you do what I tell you. Believe it or not, this isn't our first rodeo.”

“I gathered,” the Soldier says, and Romanova grins like a shark. He turns to Rogers. “I'm staying if you are, but this might not be the worst time to make a strategic retreat.”

“I'm not leaving,” Rogers says. “If you start running, you never stop.”

“Steve, you know I love you,” says Romanova, “But that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

“Wars don't get won in retreat, Nat.”

“They don't typically get won by being punched in the face, either, but that's never stopped you.”

The Rogers and Romanova Show begins in earnest. O'Malley makes an admirable attempt to maintain a poker face as the volume increases, but his befuddlement starts leaking through at the edges. He shoots a glance at the Soldier, who's already gotten bored enough to start stuffing Barnes's things back in their envelope.

“You must be new,” the Soldier says, sympathetically.

 

☙

 

“Well?” the Soldier calls, as Rogers locks the door and hangs up his coat. “Did they buy it?”

Rogers comes into the living room and turns on the lamp; the sun finished setting while he was down on the steps, but the Soldier couldn't turn on the lights, not without raising suspicion. Rogers is supposed to be alone, now. Rogers toes his shoes off before he drops onto the sofa. “Judging by how many of them made a break for their news vans—yeah, I'd say so.”

“I have a GPS feed on O'Malley,” the Soldier says, showing Rogers his phone. “He's good.” The kid's taking the exact sort of scraggly-ass snail's-pace route the Soldier might take, if he was going to light out to New York, which is apparently where Romanova's decided O'Malley's carefully choreographed presence will inspire the least amount of panic. Rogers watches for a minute and nods approvingly.

“Nat had a few sightings called in while he was still casting your face,” Rogers says. “Probably helped sell it. But—I think I got pretty sincere. I never thought peddling the bond circuit would have so much practical application.”

“Didn't help your bullshitting much,” the Soldier says. “ _Start running and you'll never stop_? Who taught you that—Barnes?”

Rogers laughs shortly. “No, he thought I was a moron. I used to say it all the time, but now it feels like a joke. What happened to the kid who always held his ground? He stood still, and time ran right by him.” Quickly, like he's embarrassed by his own honesty and doesn't want the Soldier to notice, Rogers adds: “Hey, you okay? You were a little...manic. Back there.”

“Uh,” the Soldier says, caught off guard in the middle of composing a response. He waves his hand. “Just—stressed,” he lies. “Look, let's do something that isn't watching the news or watching the windows.”

“Sure,” Rogers says. “What do you want to do?”

“Whatever you want.” Realizing even as he says it that it might be cruel, “What'd you do for fun in the old country? When you were at home?”

“Depends on who you asked,” says Rogers. “Mostly we listened to the radio and watched people from the fire escape—” (“Oh, for fuck's sake,” the Soldier says.) “—but we had board games, parlor games—”

“ _Parlor_ games?”

“—dancing,” Rogers says, and the Soldier feels his eyebrows raise.

“Dancing,” he says. “You'd just, what, push the furniture to the sides of the room, and...”

“Take the furniture _out_ , more like,” says Rogers, grinning. “Places we lived in—when Ma and I moved, a few years before she died, she walked into the new kitchen and spread her arms and said, 'Look, Steven, I can't touch the walls!' She had, I don't know, two inches of room. She thought it was a gas.”

“So you'd dance with her,” the Soldier guesses. He tries to picture it: Rogers, much smaller, and the vivacious little blonde from Barnes's sketchbooks, spinning in a tiny kitchen, bumping into cabinets, laughing. It hurts his heart, in a funny little way, imagining it. Rogers, when things were simpler, before war and everything else. Happier, probably. A lot happier.

“Or Bucky, or his sisters, or my cousins. Or people from art school, or neighbors, or—strangers! You gotta remember,” Rogers says, smiling, that warm slur edging into his voice, looking past the Soldier, “There wasn't all of this instant entertainment people have nowadays, it's crazy, it's overwhelming, it's...” He gestures inarticulately. “We read books aloud, we knitted stuff, sewed stuff, talked; we did things _with_ people, not just in the same room with them. We made our own fun.”

Rogers has talked about the past plenty of times, but there's always been a tinge of sadness to it; regret. Loneliness. It's no wonder, the Soldier thinks, coming at it crabwise and feeling like an idiot; he'd thought it was just the people Rogers missed, but it's more than that. Rogers isn't only displaced in time, he's like an alien dropped from another planet, and there's no way home. Now, talking about what people _did_ : he lights up from within. Remembering when he had fun, not when he lost a whole goddamn world.

“Come on, then,” the Soldier says, standing, holding out his hand. “Fuck 'em. They can keep us cooped up, but they can't make us miserable. Right? We'll make our own fun.”

Rogers looks like the Soldier just handed him a baby alligator. “Uh—”

“Unless you think you can't teach a one-armed guy how to dance,” the Soldier says. Following an instinct: “Or unless you're scared.”

It works better than expected: Rogers firms his jaw and comes up like a jack-in-the-box, taking the Soldier's hand in his, and then rearranging them so their palms are together. He seems momentarily at a loss for what to do with his other hand and the Soldier's lack of one, but when the Soldier raises his eyebrows, Rogers frowns, his right hand sliding up to rest on the Soldier's ribs, just below his scapula. The Soldier guesses his missing hand should be somewhere near the vicinity of Rogers's shoulder and shifts accordingly. Rogers looks like he's about to vibrate out of his skin, so the Soldier smacks Rogers's arm with his stump and says, “Relax. I thought you said you'd done this before.”

“I have.”

“Is it _me_? You never—”

“No!” Rogers says, turning pink. “It's just—too many damn people've touched you without your say-so. Last thing I wanted was to be another of them.”

“Well, here's permission.”

“Okay,” Rogers says. He pauses. “This would be easier with music, huh.”

“If you say so.”

Rogers hums, turning. He wipes a whole handful of dust off the top of the record player, rolling it into a ball between his palms. “I haven't used this thing since—a while,” he says vaguely; and then, “Since the time you shot through the wall.”

 _That_ explains a lot. “Maybe don't play that record.”

“It'd be too slow anyway,” says Rogers, and comes back as something quick and brassy pours off the needle, resuming their previous pose with much less stiffness. If the Soldier wasn't watching so carefully, he'd have missed the subtle movement of Rogers's hips, the slightest twitch from side to side like he can't help himself from following the music, like there's springs in his feet. “Just move,” Rogers says helpfully. “With the rhythm. Kind of, you know, feel it in your bones, without picking up your feet.”

“You say that like it's supposed to mean something,” the Soldier says, trying to loosen up his heavy ankles, trying to remind them that they used to be good at things other than walking a straight line. He was the world's greatest assassin, once. A prince among soft-footed men. Surely he can manage a geriatric little shuffle. He can't feel it at all, and then: he can. It's like breathing into a shot, peaks and valleys, a pulse. His joints protest a little and he ignores them.

Rogers sees him catch the rhythm and says, “Okay, now watch my feet.” When the Soldier shoots him an unimpressed look instead of following orders: “Shut up. The last time I taught somebody like this, we were fourteen, and she'd already been watching her sisters for years. There wasn't any _explaining_. You just—move your legs.”

“Imagine if I taught somebody to punch by saying _you just move your fist_ ,” but Rogers is already stepping backwards, exaggeratedly slow, and the Soldier has to follow or get left awkwardly behind at the end of Rogers's arms. “Pick up the pace, Rogers, I'm not _that_ much of a crip.”

“Complain, complain,” Rogers says. “Actually, I'm scared I'm going to yank poor Joe's tail.”

“I'm vetoing that entire sentence,” the Soldier mutters. “You don't get to name my machine or give it a personality.”

He anticipates Rogers's next move and steps into it quicker than Rogers expects, his spine straightening. He gets it. Rogers is wrong; it's not the legs at all, it's the hips and the balls of the feet, a smooth back-and-forth rock. He _gets_ it. Rogers tries to surprise him with a quarter-turn, and he only stumbles a little, catching himself before he loses the rhythm entirely.

“Hey!” Rogers says, delighted. “You're a natural!” By the time the Soldier looks, the smile's fallen off of Rogers's face. Dammit. “I mean—sorry, I didn't—”

“If I'm going to have Barnes's muscle memory for anything,” the Soldier says, “I'd much rather have it for dancing than for shooting people, sweetheart.”

“Don't mock me,” Rogers murmurs.

“I'm not,” the Soldier says. “I'm not mocking you.”

“It's hard to tell; you're—” almost hitting their shins on the coffee table, “It's—sorry—hard to tell where the line is, sometimes, whether you're teasing me, or...”

Rogers doesn't pick up the thread for a whole rotation. “ _Or_?”

“Flirting,” Rogers says, like it's been tortured it out of him. The Soldier stumbles for real, almost kicking Rogers in the ankle before he finds his footing. “Which would be fine!” Rogers adds, high and quick. “I don't have a problem with—”

“If the pet names bother you,” the Soldier starts, even though he's not sure he can excise Philly from his brain, but Rogers shakes his head hard, looking like he wants to sink into the floor.

“It's just, Bucky used to say I was the most clueless guy in New York,” Rogers says. “So. It's fine. Say whatever you like. But, uh, if you _were_ —”

“Not sure I'm capable of being subtle,” the Soldier says. “I think you'd know, if—but I'll keep that in mind,” he adds, in a tone he hopes is outright jokey enough for Rogers not to misconstrue, “If I ever feel like asking you on the world's worst date. House arrest, agents on the doors, window with a hole in it.”

It hits the right mark; Rogers laughs. “Candlelit dinner, two cans of Joey formula.”

The Soldier fights a smile. “Romanova, watching from the fire escape.”

Rogers, dark and gravelly: “SHIELD bugs,” and the Soldier finally loses his faltering rhythm, cracking up. Rogers, grinning, doesn't let go of him. It's nice. He's missed the casual handsiness of La Cueva, he realizes, without having been able to put his finger on the feeling until now. Simple human connection. It's grounding. And Rogers—the Soldier'd been starting to think he could only know Rogers in moments of hurt, could only see through him in the raw, but the Soldier was seeing the cloak. Rogers is clear as glass, now, and it takes years off him; makes him seem like the twenty-something kid he is instead of an old man out of time. It makes the Soldier want to be kinder.

“I should say, I'm not trying to—” The Soldier shakes his head, frustrated by language. He lets Rogers nudge him into movement when a new song starts. “I imprinted, I guess; that's just what she was like. Everybody was her sweetheart, her baby doll, her—”

“She?”

“Tank.”

“Your friend from Philly.”

“My handler,” the Soldier says, “If we're being honest.”

“We don't have to be,” Rogers says. “I don't see a court of law around here, do you?”

The Soldier blinks. “You surprise me all the time,” he confesses. “You're marshland, Rogers. Sometimes I don't know where to step.”

“And I haven't even twirled you yet.”

“Sure, if you want to see me fall on my ass.”

“I don't,” Rogers says. And then: “I'm not, really. Am I? Everyone says I'm predictable.”

“Well...” He rocks on his heel instead of the ball of his foot when Rogers turns them, finding a patch of grit. “Maybe it's just me. I was,” he says, “Raised by wolves.”

“You surprise me too,” Rogers says. He sounds it; quiet and a little perplexed. “I thought you'd be angrier. In general, I mean, but. At them, specifically.” Lower: “For what they did to you. What they—took.”

“I am angry,” the Soldier admits. “Of course I'm angry. I'm furious; they took my whole damn life. But it doesn't _solve_ anything. I could join you on your rampages but it wouldn't change what happened. Hell, I could wake up tomorrow and remember everything, and it still wouldn't bring my life back.” Rogers opens his mouth like he's about to argue. “No,” the Soldier says, pushing back physically, fumbling the lead. Rogers skips to settle his feet in the right place. “It doesn't work like that, Rogers, it's—remembering doesn't mean I'd be— _restored_. They'd still have taken everything. It'd still be gone. There's moments—” He catches himself speeding up, tense, and deliberately slows down. Breathes out. “There's moments where, after, you're different.”

“Yeah,” Rogers says. “I just thought—”

“I know what you thought.”

“I thought you'd be happier,” Rogers says anyway, which isn't what the Soldier was expecting at all. Neither is how fierce Rogers looks about it: righteous, not sad. “If you remembered, I thought—maybe if you had more things that weren't horrible, it'd be easier.”

“I think I'm better off not knowing what I'm missing,” the Soldier says, and Rogers ducks his chin. “Can you really say you're happier than me? Remembering everything you lost?” Rogers jerks his head, not quite a shake. Edging as close to the truth as he dares: “Even if I did, even if I remembered—I wouldn't be the same person you knew. You've got to know that.”

“I do,” Rogers says. “I do know that, I—I anticipated it, honestly.” A shift of his jaw; his left hand clenches and relaxes in the Soldier's right, so fast he almost imagines it. “Even when my expectations were—”

“Unrealistic.”

“Unfair,” says Rogers. “I never expected—okay,” he concedes, looking at the ceiling, “Yeah, I wished that things would go back to the way they were, I wished _I—_ but. I never really thought that you—that Bucky would walk in here and light up a cigarette and continue our last conversation as if nothing'd changed. He was different when we grew up, he was different in the war, I knew he'd be different after HYDRA, I just...”

“Hoped,” the Soldier says gently.

“I only ever wanted you to be happy,” Rogers says.

The Soldier realizes they've nearly stopped moving; swaying in place like the way they started, the rhythm in their bones and their feet on the ground. Rogers's hips ticking from side to side with the music, just slightly. Metronome-steady. The Soldier is suddenly conscious, as he hasn't been in the whole of the time they've been moving together, of how they look: two men dancing close, heads bent together. He imagines the agents outside looking in on them and flushes with something that isn't quite shame.

“Him,” the Soldier murmurs, hating himself, “Or me?”

Rogers's quiet desperation when he says: “Can't it be both?” The Soldier makes an empty noise. “You're my friend too, you know.”

“So you've said. Maybe I'm being insecure—”

“ _Yeah_ ,” says Rogers wryly, eyebrows high.

“I'm just finding it hard to understand,” the Soldier says. “You'll have to explain it to me in little words. Not so long ago, it seemed like you didn't want me around.”

“I did,” Rogers says, “I do. But I was. Embarrassed. By how I'd treated you. It's like—” He groans. “One time I was at a big nursing dinner with Ma, and for some reason I was convinced this one lady was called Mrs. Tilden, but she was Mrs. Tilburn, and nobody corrected me the whole night, including her, and I could've died when I found out. Like that, except worse, because it wasn't just your name, it was _you_ , and it wasn't just one night, it was months.”

The Soldier frantically tries to think of the right response. What Rogers needs to hear. _You were grieving_ is true but unhelpful, and Rogers already knows it; Rogers would say it shouldn't be an excuse. _I'm glad you did or I might not be alive_ is cruel. _You tried so hard to fix it_ doesn't change that it needed to be fixed. _It's fine_ is meaningless.

“I forgive you,” the Soldier says.

Rogers crumples. He doesn't fall down, doesn't even make the Soldier take any of his weight, but he seems to collapse internally, like his skin's trying to shrink from a full-body blow. He turns his head away like he's trying to hide his expression, but not quick enough. The Soldier catches the flinch of it, the broken-open relief. It's like seeing Rogers naked, like seeing his chest cracked open. This is the moment, the Soldier thinks: this is the moment you should _hug_ him, you _ass_ —but it's too late. A huge metallic sound crashes outside, and they're flinging themselves away from each other, half-crouched, their hands still absurdly clasped. An angry rising wail follows. The Soldier realizes what it is at the same time Rogers does: just a cat messing with somebody's garbage cans. The Soldier's laugh is more than a little unhinged.

Rogers reels them back together so they're standing shoulder to shoulder. Their bodies towards the windows, like they're waiting for dawn. Rogers squeezes the Soldier's hand before he drops it, turning to look at him.

“Hey,” Rogers says. “It's gonna be okay.”

“Hey,” says the Soldier. “I almost believe you.”

 

☙

 

He doesn't remember his dreams, as a general rule. He's asleep or he's not, most often the latter, and doesn't seem to spend much time in the space between. It feels like a thousand years ago when he asked Queenie if it was normal, after night upon night watching the girls on the rugs twitching in their sleep, eyes moving beneath their lids. She'd said she never remembered hers, either. But this one's hard to claw out of, confused as it is: his brain can't decide if he's holding a gun or a broomstick, and he's running for his life in a house that's wrong, somehow; too many floors or too many passageways or _something_. The architecture disturbs him. He keeps catching glimpses of stone and scuttling away from it, like the stone's a lion chasing him through the halls. When he's kicked into consciousness like a boot to the rear, he's grateful. He'd almost rather have Barnes's dreams, he thinks wryly, than muddled-up shit like that. It must be the stress.

It's the smell of food that actually woke him up, he thinks, not the raised voices, but the latter makes him groan and pull the pillow over his head. Just for a minute, before he can pep-talk himself out of bed. By the time he gets his feet on the floor, the sound coming from the kitchen is dire enough that he unhooks everything from the feeding pole and heads out in just his pajama pants, tubes thrown over his shoulder. The living room curtains are shut so hard they overlap, drawing murky twilight over rooms that should be morning-bright.

“—can't be serious,” Rogers says, and trails off, distracted, as the Soldier comes in and drops everything on the counter. Romanova, wearing a blonde wig, pink lipstick, and a boxy pantsuit for reasons that can't possibly be fashion, gives him a slow up-and-down he decides to ignore. She's eating limp Chinese food out of a styrofoam carton. From the look of it, there's another carton in the microwave.

“What's going on?” the Soldier says, opening the cabinet.

“It didn't work,” says Rogers.

“It did work,” Romanova says. “Media's still happily trailing after O'Malley. We just couldn't foresee the...peripheral consequences.”

“That's literally your job,” Rogers growls.

Around the packet in his teeth, the Soldier says, “Rogers,” and reaches out to nudge him. Rogers shoots him a look that's more exasperated than murderous. “S'not her fault.”

Rogers snaps, “I know,” and then subsides. Softer: “I know. I'm sorry, Nat, but this is—”

“Cruel and unusual, yes,” Romanova says, unconcerned. She waves her chopsticks at the Soldier. “Fill him in.”

“It's a protest, apparently,” Rogers says. “Nat's been undercover since six this morning. They're saying Captain America's committed a dereliction of duty by letting the Winter Soldier go. Half of them want a manhunt for O'Malley-as-you, and half of them want Cap to give up the shield.”

“I hate to remind you, but you're Captain America,” says Romanova.

“Captain America can go soak his head,” Rogers shoots back. “Right now I'm plain old Steve Rogers, and I'm gonna do what's right. Not what a bunch of weekend warriors tell me to do.” Rogers's grin is ghastly. “Those people've never marched for anybody's rights. It's not a real protest until the paddy wagons show up.”

“I can't believe I have to say this,” Romanova sighs, pushing away her food, “But _do not engage_. No, Steve, shut up. I'll have you hog-tied in the back of Nick's van if I think you're so much as considering it. The absolute dead-last thing we need is someone getting hurt, physically or emotionally—anything that could constitute a court summons. We play this clean. _Da_?”

The Soldier braces himself for a fight, but the corner of Rogers's mouth comes up. “ _Ti yebanutaya_ ,” he says, in an accent worse than the Soldier's. Romanova smiles and drags her food back in front of her. The Soldier exhales, shaking the tension out of his arm. The microwave dings. When the Soldier puts his pack on the island to wind up the tube, Romanova gives him a water chestnut to hold in his mouth.

“So,” the Soldier says, once the flavor’s gone and Rogers finishes his food. “Bitching's done—what are we doing about it?”

“If you think I'm done complaining,” Rogers starts; Romanova says over him: “Nothing we aren't already doing. We have people moving in and out of the crowd, enforcement on standby in case the mood becomes hostile, and the agents on the door are recording video 24/7. Everyone out there is within their rights,” she says to Rogers. “They're scared and they feel betrayed. You can't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing under different circumstances.”

“Protest, sure—picket somebody's house, no,” Rogers says irritably. “How much longer are we expected to be shut in here?”

“It'll blow over soon, and if it doesn't, we'll capture O'Malley in public,” Romanova says, brushing imaginary crumbs off her ugly pantsuit and collecting her things. She smirks. “Just lay back and think of Brooklyn.” She catches the chopstick Rogers throws at her and spins it like a baton on her way out.

“I hate her,” Rogers grumbles, obviously thinking nothing of the sort. The Soldier struggles to keep a straight face. Luckily for him, Rogers pushes away from the island and says, “I'm going to go see what they're saying on the news.”

“Yell if any of the anchors are handsomer than you,” the Soldier says. Startled laughter from the other side of the partition. He tidies the kitchen, for a lack of anything better to do, before he bumps into the cold counter and reminds himself he's still only half dressed.

He's halfway down the hall when Rogers calls, “Uh, J?” Hell, that didn't take long. The Soldier grabs yesterday's shirt off the dresser and tugs it on before he heads back, struggling with the pack, his left sleeve refusing to cooperate.

“That was quick,” he says, or tries to say. Only the first two words come out before he sees the television and stops dead. He stands with his mouth open, one sleeve dangling empty. Rogers reaching for him in his peripheral vision. _I'm not going to fucking fall down, Rogers_ , he thinks detachedly, even as he's pawing for the back of the sofa, blind, hitting Rogers's shoulder instead. His fingers dig in without his say-so. Rogers's hand on his, firm.

“Is that—?” Rogers asks. “Is she—”

“You're goddamn right you can quote me on that,” says Tank.

“Hell,” the Soldier says.

 

☙

 

“We called him Manito,” Tank is saying. “Poor kid so messed up he didn't know he was supposed to have a name. I had to wash his hair for him. Could hardly string four words together.”

Rogers is pulling the Soldier around to the correct side of the sofa and making him sit down. It occurs to him, even as he registers the manhandling and feels himself begin to check out, that she looks—good. They both do. Sofie, perched straight-backed in a white dress, keeps sneaking glances at the camera with her good eye. Tank's face is rounder, not so sharp-edged as he remembers. Her hair still buzzed close to her scalp. Her blouse is yellow, high-collared, conservative. It hides all but the furthest extremes of her tattoos; a blur on her neck, the leopard print on her knuckles. Pits he knows live in the bend of her elbows, under the ink, under the fabric.

The canvas back of her wheelchair, when she leans forward.

“A little baby,” Tank says. “Scared to pieces he'd hurt somebody. He'd've cut off his arms if he thought it would help.”

“He didn't know how to pet a cat,” Sofie whispers. The boom microphone edges into shot. “He thought he was gonna hurt it 'till I held his hand n'showed him.”

“Did he ever act violently?” the interviewer asks.

“Sure,” says Tank. “Sometimes. Forgot who he was, got scared, thought we were gonna hurt him. I'm tellin' you, his brain was _mush_. Tell you the truth I'm fu—freakin' amazed he was alive, some of the crap he said they'd done to him.”

“I thought—” Rogers says, making the Soldier jump. “You never said, but I thought she was...dead.”

The Soldier shakes his head numbly.

“—think he was dangerous?”

“What kinda dumb question is that?” Tank says. “No offense, ma'am. 'Course he was dangerous. Kept a close eye on him, same as all the vets. But you don't go'n turn out a vet on account of he's f—messed up and don't know a hawk from a handsaw. Not if you got any feeling at all. Especially in regards to him. Sorriest state I ever seen. He hurt all the damn time, he moved like my abuelo. Couldn't hardly eat if it wasn't, freakin'—mashed up rice and broth and sh—stuff. Who _does_ that to somebody?”

“Are you okay?” Rogers says quietly.

“No,” the Soldier says. “I think I'm about to have a fucking heart attack.”

Rogers reaches into the space between them and touches his hand.

“—the shooting?” the interviewer is saying.

“Took four bullets,” Tank says. “One of 'em in the spine. Doc says I'll never walk again, but he's a total hack, so.” Tank grins crookedly. The Soldier feels it in his chest like a knife. “Few of my girls weren't so lucky. But he saved us. I know America's got no cause to listen to a brown chick, let alone a dope addict, cops're probably wishing HYDRA'd wiped us off the face of the planet, but if anybody's gonna listen to anything, that's what I want them to hear. Buncha losers living rough, but he went and saved us. 'Cause he's a good person. They messed him up but he was still a good person.”

“What do you hope to gain from sharing your story?”

“Dunno how to answer that,” Tank says. “No, don't rephrase, ma'am, I ain't stupid. It's just, it's self-evident, yeah? Country's cryin' manhunt for some poor kid who got tortured 'till he wouldn't know his mama from Beyoncé. He's scared and he don't want to hurt nobody and now he's all alone, running for his life. Again. And what're they gonna do when they catch him? Put a cap in the back of his head, probably.” Tank leans so far out of her wheelchair it looks as though she's going to fall forwards. Sofie puts her little hands on Tank's arm. “What do I hope to _gain_? Some peace for a guy who never got any. And deserves it more than the likes of you or me.”

The Soldier scrambles off the couch. Rogers reaches out for him but he dodges it ungracefully, almost knocking over the standing lamp. It takes three hard tugs to drag the blankets off his bed. More than a month since he's needed the closet; he's misjudged the size. Him and the blankets barely fit. The door won't close all the way.

He burrows deep, curls up as small as he can, and sobs until he can't breathe.


	8. hope is the thing with feathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can I tell you something?” the Soldier whispers, once he's dead certain that Rogers is asleep.
> 
> Rogers doesn't so much as twitch.
> 
> “Everyone keeps telling me I'm a good person,” he says, so quietly he can hardly hear himself. The click of his tongue against his teeth louder than his voice. “I'm not. I'm glad you crashed the plane. I'm glad HYDRA wanted you dead. Or I never would've met you.”

When James runs, Steve has to make two fists on his thighs to stop himself from getting up and chasing after. It's obvious just how upset James is, and he's probably having a goddamn meltdown in his room, but if there's one thing Steve's learned from hanging around Sam and his vets, it's how to read the nuances he used to miss. James's body language couldn't have been clearer: he needs some time. So Steve keeps his butt on the sofa and frets a bunch and misses most of the interview, which ends up being okay, because they replay it right away before the commentators start taking it to pieces.

Miss Castillo—James had called her _Tank_ , and Steve'd imagined—okay, he'd imagined someone a lot like this, strategically conservative clothes aside—is eloquent and polite and obviously educated, which probably isn't what most viewers will take away, Steve thinks irritably. They'll read big butch Tank as a crook and shy little Sofia as cowed and afraid, when it's clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that Sofia's the thoughtful kind of quiet that takes a person by surprise, and Tank's got what Steve's ma used to call the Compassion Disease. Steve has to wonder if Tank came to justify running a quasi-legal safehouse the same way Steve once justified picking fights—no matter how unhealthy it was, if you looked at it sideways and upside down, they were helping people, weren't they? At the end of the day? They could convince themselves of that, at least, and sleep through the night. Maybe he's projecting, but. Something in him recognizes something in her.

And for all that he shouldn't feel this way, considering everything that went down, most of which he hasn't felt brave enough to ask about, he's really unspeakably grateful it was Tank who found James. He generally tries not to think too hard about James stumbling from DC to Philly, injured and confused and alone, but it's easier when he pictures Tank, now that he has something to picture: a Valkyrie swooping in to patch James up and help him remember what being a person feels like. Heroin aside, he hopes it was like that. James doesn't talk about Philly, much, and Steve can see why. There's...a lot of emotion, here. And more than Steve's picking up, for certain.

When the protesters outside start hollering jingles loud enough to drown out the loudmouthed commentators on the television, he turns it off and glances at the clock. It's been nearly an hour, and no sign of James. He's going to check; he can handle it if James gets angry at him.

What he finds is—

He has to leave the room and breathe for a while before he can go back in.

Bucky'd had the twin curses of being a sensitive guy who didn't like anyone to see him upset. When he was a kid he'd dash tears off his face as fast as he could, and Steve sometimes caught him biting his cheek or twisting the skin on his wrist to stop them before they started. It'd taken Steve a long time to figure it out, longer than it should've, but Bucky was good at hiding things he didn't want to talk about and covering them with a heavy veneer of nonchalance. Bucky's dad wasn't a bad guy, not by any stretch, but he'd had some funny ideas, and one of them was how boys shouldn't ever show emotion, and he'd intimidated the hell out of Bucky until Bucky'd become what he had: a guy who didn't cry, not ever, and had come to hate it by the end, confessing once to Steve while bivouacking in the ass-end of nowhere that he felt sort of stuffed up inside, like hayfever in his brain, like he needed to drain a wound and couldn't. Steve'd never had a chance to help Bucky figure out how to let go. Not that Steve was very good at it either.

James...doesn't seem to have that problem.

He ran, sure, but he's far from hidden, with his bedroom door and the closet door wide open, tucked up into a tiny ball of misery in a pile of blankets, his back exposed, drawing Steve's eye like a magnet. James hates to be coddled and he'd hate that Steve's pitying him now, but there's nothing he can feel otherwise, not when he tiptoes up and risks a look at James's face, red and wet and contorted by some internal agony, even in sleep. James had often looked like that when he slept, the first few weeks, when he was still hooked up to a forest of tubes and looked like he'd made a wrong turn at Hades and crawled back out bare-handed. Like he was being beat by the people in his dreams.

Hell. Steve would've been less sure, if it'd been Bucky, but James is always so precise. Deliberate, in his actions, like he's always making sure he's in control. And if there's one thing in particular Steve's learned about James, it's that he'll pick people over solitude any chance he gets. If he'd really and truly wanted to be left alone, even as distressed as he was— _especially_ as distressed as he was—he would have shut the door and barred it with the armchair besides.

 _Well, here's permission_ , James had said, in that coffee-and-gravel voice of his, when he'd been holding Steve's hand. When he'd been stepping between Steve's feet, unafraid.

Okay, Steve thinks. Okay then.

 

* * *

 

It's a combination of hypoxia and exhaustion that drags the Soldier down into sleep. He wakes up with a headache, sore eyes, a pain in his throat like he's torn something vital, and a warm weight at his back that's more than the blankets can account for. When he shifts, Rogers's arm tightens around his waist.

“Not gonna apologize,” Rogers mumbles.

The Soldier makes a querying noise.

“Didn't want you to be alone.”

He clears his aching throat before it can close up on him. “What if I wanted to be alone?”

“You didn't,” Rogers says. He presses some part of his face against the Soldier's spine. “You never do.”

That's—

Too much, on top of everything else. He stops reflexively leaning away from Rogers and lets himself go boneless, trying to focus on the parts of him that don't hurt. Rogers's measured breathing in his ear. It's slower than his own. Rogers said once that his resting heart rate was twenty-four beats per minute. He'd had tachycardia before, he said: for several seconds after he'd emerged from the machine, he'd thought his heart had stopped. Given Rogers's enhanced hearing, the Soldier wonders if his own galloping heartbeat is audible, if Rogers can hear the blood moving in his veins. He'd read, somewhere, about a stethoscope so strong it could hear the firing of nerves. Is Rogers such a sensitive instrument? It must have half-killed him, during the war.

A conundrum occurs. “How're you fitting in here?”

“M'not,” Rogers says. “Took the door off the rollers. You were dead to the world, it kinda worried me.” The Soldier opens his mouth, but Rogers gets there first. “If that's an apology I'm gonna kick you, pal.”

“Figures you'd be a thrasher,” the Soldier says, and Rogers huffs a laugh against the Soldier's skin, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He doesn't remember taking the Joey off, but he must have; he couldn't have been out _that_ cold, for Rogers to wrestle it off of his back without waking him up. He finds he doesn't care, either way, if the trade-off is six-plus feet of human furnace.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Rogers asks.

“Not much to say.”

“They replayed most of it. She said you broke up fights and did first aid and went after the guy who assaulted her little sister.” Rogers pauses. “So, that guy you said you murdered for heroin...”

“Mm.”

“You kind of left out some details,” Rogers says.

“Does it matter?” the Soldier says. “I did it for the drugs, I did it because he was a baby-raping sadist—does it _matter_? I still killed somebody.”

“You killed lots of people, though,” Rogers says quietly. “For worse reasons, arguably. Why's this guy tearing you up?”

“I don't know,” the Soldier says. “He was the only one I meant to kill when I was—me. Mostly. For my own reasons, anyway, not theirs. And not in self-defense. Don't think I'll ever be sure if I did the right thing.”

Rogers is quiet for a while. Then he says, “There's an old guy I play chess with at the VFW, Abram? We were talking one time—there was this big thing, around then, on the news, about this woman who publicly forgave the guy who kidnapped and murdered her daughter. I said I thought it was brave of her, and Abram disagreed. On a personal level, he said: sure, maybe. But in Jewish thinking, only the victim can provide forgiveness.”

“And she was dead.”

“Yeah. So. I asked him what that meant, practically. What a murderer's supposed to do if he wants to atone. And Abram said the only way is living the kindest and most virtuous possible life. Saving people, ideally. He told me a story about this right-wing antisemitic guy who'd murdered a Jewish politician—he ended up spending the war rescuing hundreds of Jews at his own expense, at the risk of his own life. Abram said, in his opinion, that's the closest anybody's ever gotten to atoning.” Rogers clears his throat. “I dunno if that helps, but. I find it comforting, the idea that it's better to improve the world than to be forgiven.”

“Yeah,” the Soldier says. “It is. I mean, I don't want to be forgiven. I want it to not have happened. And if I can't have that, then at least it—I don't know. Gives purpose. If nothing else.”

“Amen,” Rogers mumbles.

He's going to regret it, but he asks anyway. “What else did Tank say?”

“Said she's clean, she had to, um, detox? In the hospital. Working at a shelter, trying to get her kids off the street. Sounded like she was doing really well.” Rogers hesitates; the Soldier can feel him working his jaw. “Do you...want to see her?”

“No,” the Soldier says, too quickly. He amends: “Not yet. Not while—and not until I'm sure I'm—I still think about the drugs. A lot. It's _stupid_ , I don't need them anymore, the pain's getting better, but—”

“Addiction's not really an intellectual exercise,” Rogers says.

I wish it was, he thinks wearily, and closes his eyes. For all he feels rubbed raw, worn to a stub, he's glad—he's so glad. She's alive, and she's still looking after her girls, looking after everyone. Isn't it just like Tank: isn't it fucking typical. Gut-shot and paralyzed and grieving and _still_ making a safe space; still telling everyone the Soldier's a good man, even after what he brought. Even after what his presence did. Blood on the floor. Blood on the Mexican rug. Sofie in his head, screaming: _María! María!_ He jerks, hard.

“Hey,” Rogers says. “You're okay.”

A wash of shame. “Surely you've got something better you could be doing.”

“Nope,” Rogers says, drawing out the N. He adds, with significantly less cheer, “They've started chanting out front, so. You're not the only one who's hiding.”

“The hell are they _saying_?”

“ _Captain America / He's our guy / He's sold us all / A pack of lies_ was my personal favorite,” Rogers says blandly, “But _Captain Rogers / Went off the rez / Don't look now / He's fucked the Prez_ had a certain something.”

The Soldier is shocked speechless. After a minute, Rogers says, “It's fine, really. I had a lot worse during the war. I just, you know. Feel sorry for my neighbors.”

“Greek café's probably doing all right for itself.” It's the only thing he can think of that isn't awful. Rogers snorts. Cautiously, the Soldier says, “They're not wrong, though. Their—cause, or whatever. By all rights you should've hunted me down.”

“It's not like I didn't _try_ ,” Rogers says, sounding comically offended, “I was trying! But you were laying low in Philly, of all places! Babysitting and stepping out with a nice boy and throwing up a lot, apparently, so I don't see as how it's entirely _my_ fault—” and the Soldier's laughing too loudly to hear the end of it. His body's still half-caught in hysteria and evidently not damn well done being that way, so there's some tears mixed in with it that shouldn't be. He almost goes off again when Rogers says, “Hell, it wasn't _that_ funny,” but he breathes in and out slowly and puts a lid on it.

Rogers gets up on his other elbow and leans over the Soldier, his concerned face swimming into view.

“Don't look at me, Jesus,” the Soldier protests, sliding his hand up over his eyes. “I'm a fucking mess.”

“Yeah,” Rogers says. “But, remember? I'm biased.”

“Was that supposed to be a compliment?” the Soldier asks, trying harder than he ever has not to laugh. “Yeah, you look terrible, but it's okay, because I like you anyway? Wow, no wonder Carter refused your proposal, Rogers.”

It's too dark in the closet to see, but the Soldier's certain Rogers turns pink before he flops back down, hiding his face where the Soldier can't see him. He mumbles something that might be _I hate you_ , but his arm still heavy over the Soldier's waist takes the sting entirely out of it.

“Is this what we're doing?” the Soldier asks. “Hiding in the closet for the rest of the day?”

“Dunno about you,” says Rogers, “But I was set on a nap, before you started yakking.”

The Soldier swats whatever part of Rogers he can reach with his stump before he relaxes, twisting his arm under his head. Fuck it. He's tired and he hurts and Rogers is warm.

Reality can wait another hour.

 

☙

 

It takes very little coaxing for the Soldier to convince Rogers that drowning out the protesters is in the best interest of their mental health. They schedule their lives around tending to the record player. To Rogers's delight, the Soldier learns he prefers Big Band to just about anything else from Rogers's large and eccentric collection. Barton mocks both of them when he visits in what he calls his “official capacity,” which mostly seems to involve wearing a lot of leather, but he comes bearing food, so Rogers ignores the ribbing.

“Stark's getting antsy,” Barton tells him. “He wants to foist his legal team onto this whole mess before it starts making bad PR.”

“It hasn't already?” Rogers says. “Anyway, I'm aware, JARVIS's been apologetically emailing me twice a day. If Tony wants to make things official, he's a big boy, he knows where I am.”

“I'll remind you that you said that when he makes a dent in your roof,” says Barton.

Wilson, still fighting off the last dregs of paparazzi, decides to take a week off and visit his sister in Jersey. (“ _Jersey_ ,” Rogers says, aggrieved, like Jersey insulted his mother.) The Soldier receives a text every hour featuring one or both of Wilson's baby nieces in a variety of frilly dresses. Wilson knows his audience; when the Soldier sneaks a look at Rogers's phone, it's been similarly besieged by photos of dogs. Between Wilson and the record player, there's stretches of time where the Soldier can almost forget there's a barricade of people outside who want to see him hang.

Rogers, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be able to let it go. The Soldier is forced to hide the television remotes and Rogers's phone on the third day, and more than once he finds himself tugging Rogers away from the windows, where he's watching the crowd through a shadowed gap in the curtains. Mostly in the early hours, it seems: when the Soldier wakes in the dark with a sensation of wrongness rattling around in his head, it's inevitably Rogers, pacing down the hall or already standing in the living room like a ghost. Whatever Rogers is doing in his room the rest of the night, it doesn't seem to be sleeping, not from the dark circles under his eyes. Whenever there's a shout loud enough to be heard over the music, Rogers flinches.

The Soldier hates them too, their constant noise and their smug surety and the wall they make between him and the outside world, but he doesn't take it to heart so much as Rogers. Rogers doesn't seem to give a damn about his own honor, but the Soldier's is another matter entirely. The Soldier can't bring himself to be quite so convinced. There's a part of him that's certain they're right. Not in the particulars, but in their reasons. Think of the children, they might say. The Soldier is dangerous, or was: it's true. The Soldier is evading the law: also true. The Soldier, regardless of his willingness to participate, killed civilians while trying to eliminate his targets. Rogers, as the primary operative on the DC engagement and the individual with the most intel on the Winter Soldier, not to mention someone who gave sanctuary to the same, is the logical person to lead the hunt. That there should be a hunt at all is a matter of fact, given the givens.

Rogers thinks that Tank's interviews and the increasingly horrific reveals from the HYDRA data-pack will sway public opinion, and overall he's not wrong—the news is less and less histrionic whenever the Soldier forces himself to check—but their personal swarm of protesters seems to exist in a bubble, unaffected. Romanova's team comes closer and closer to stage-capturing O'Malley in New York, but that comes with its own set of problems, the least of which is the danger that the media at large will blow up again, just at the very moment it's beginning to settle down. In the meanwhile, every time the Soldier has to cajole Rogers away from the windows, his heart sinks a little further, and he becomes even less sure that he's worth Rogers's suffering.

To distract himself out of defeatism, he tries to imagine what he'll do when all of this is over, when their lives are their own again. ( _When_ , he has to think, or he'll cave in to despair.) Walks are his first priority. Maybe someday, he'll be able to join Wilson on a run. Or volunteer at the VA. He thinks a lot about how he wants to modify some part of his body, maybe get a piercing. Preferably his face, in capitulation to the thing in his head that stubbornly wants him to stop seeing Barnes when he looks in the mirror, but he feels less and less antagonistic towards Barnes, these days, and the impulse seems a little excessive. His ears, then. He's more curious than confident that his decreasingly robust serum will push out piercings like it used to push out bullets, but there's only one way to find out. Maybe those—whatever they're called. The plugs of varying sizes he's seen people work up to wearing in their lobes. If it actively distorts the topography of his skin, surely his body won't be capable of rejecting it? Will he, in the absence of sedation, allow a stranger to approach him with a needle? The questions entertain him when his brain has nothing better to do than worry.

On the fifth evening, Rogers finally breaks.

“I can't,” he says, when the Soldier grabs his elbow. “J, I can't, I can't do this anymore.”

“No engaging,” the Soldier says. “Romanova's orders.”

“Look,” Rogers snarls, drawing himself up, making himself look big; it's something that might have worked before the procedure added a foot of height, but it's absurd now, a rooster putting extra feathers in its tail. The Soldier stands his ground. “This is ridiculous. It doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong. They're disrupting the neighborhood, they're keeping agents from important work, they're _scaring_ people. It's gotta stop. Let me go.”

“Tell me what you're going to tell them,” the Soldier says flatly. Rogers, in a mood like this, is going to do exactly what he wants the second the Soldier's back is turned, so he may as well be an assist.

“That I have a moral objection to hunting down and arresting someone who's been a prisoner most of his goddamn life, maybe? Just spitballing, here.”

“Wrong.” The Soldier moves his grip from Rogers's elbow to his shoulder, digging in with his thumb. “You tell them you've been forcibly removed from this mission due to conflict of interest. There's nothing you can do, you're under house arrest, you're breaking the rules just talking to them—work the fucking crowd, Rogers; you're famous for it. Make them sympathize with you. You're not up on a soapbox, you're a soldier with your marching orders and you can't do _shit_ , and they should go home and be with the kids they're so goddamn worried about.”

Rogers sighs. The corner of his mouth flicks up. “Thanks. You're probably right. I know you don't like it, but I'm just. Doing my job.”

“Sure,” the Soldier says. “Because you're _definitely_ not going out there to prove a point.”

Rogers's wide-open transparent face: the twist of conflicted gladness that means Barnes said something very similar, once, probably when Rogers was being equally stubborn about something stupid and virtuous. The Soldier wonders if Rogers has ever successfully managed to lie to another human being in his whole goddamn life.

“Barnes?” the Soldier checks. Rogers twitches. “Hey, guess what—he was right! But I'm guessing he never stopped you, either, so. Go with god, or whatever.”

Rogers, for once, doesn't have a come-back.

The baby agents at the door don't react until Rogers is halfway down the hall, clearly headed for the stairs; the Soldier puts his arm out against the one and shakes his head at the other.

“You won't be able to stop him,” the Soldier says. “I have a feeling he'll very gently put you in the broom closet and lock the door if you try.”

“I'll have to radio it in, sir,” the older one says. “Agent Alvarez—”

“Agent Alvarez will be aware in about five seconds, but sure, go ahead,” the Soldier says, clapping the younger one on the shoulder before he heads back inside.

The Soldier takes up Rogers's position at the gap in the curtain; he can just barely see a slice of the step where Rogers emerges, Rogers's hands moving as he placates the agents. The top of his blonde head. He looks wholesome, upright— _happy_ , the Soldier realizes with a start, happy to be doing something concrete after all the waiting, if he had to guess. Rogers's movements, what little he can see of them, are relaxed in a way they haven't been for days. Someone in the crowd shouts something indistinct; Rogers appears to answer it calmly. The Soldier can't be sure, but he feels there's an apologetic slant to Rogers's shoulders. He's in his element, down there. The Soldier feels almost guilty about holding him back.

It happens in an instant.

A woman with a sign steps forward. Reflexively, so does an agent, his hand coming up to rest on the handle of his gun. Almost too fast to comprehend, the agent is knocked to the ground by other protesters. Shouting. Rogers jerks towards the agent. As the Soldier watches in horror, the crowd convulses, and then they swarm over the step like one body. It looks for a moment like they're reaching out for Rogers, trying to touch him, pilgrims around a saint. The bodies in the center, writhing. The flash of fists.

The Soldier hears himself yell. Scream, really: it's an inhuman sound, a voiceless animal convulsion. “ _Steve_!” comes out of his mouth like a mallet. It should break his teeth. He's in the hall before he registers his own movement; stumbling down the stairs faster than he can think _don't trip don't trip don't trip_. His momentum slams him into the door before he can wrench it open. It's Alvarez barring the way. The Soldier flings his pack off and lets it drag behind him. Ducks Alvarez's arm and nearly falls on his face. He can't see Rogers.

Auxiliary agents appear from their posts in the alley, on the roof, from behind him, bullying their way through as the Soldier starts to grab at flailing arms and legs. One agent boosts another over the railing. The Soldier catches an elbow to the temple. Ringing ears as the agent reaches him. She's taller and broader than him; stronger. She pushes two people at once, up and off the chaos below, and shaking clear of his daze the Soldier crawls half under her to grab at a patch of skin he recognizes. Rogers's rough nails, his dry knuckles. A cold jolt goes through him when he grasps it. It's limp like meat.

He pulls and nothing happens. The weight of too many struggling bodies. He cries out, inarticulate, and four agents are there, pushing, manipulating the crowd, changing its margins. It feels like an hour, like a molasses-sticky _year_ before the Soldier manages to struggle back a single step, Rogers's wrist clamped in his sweaty hand, his face a rictus of effort. His heart beating like it wants out. The burly agent puts her shoulder to someone's diaphragm and the Soldier's stumbling, falling, his back hitting something hard and sharp, Rogers's head nearly colliding with the bottom step: free of the crush. The Soldier rolls over and groans; _stairs_. His spine. The pain is so bad, momentarily, he can't breathe.

When the world stops swimming in and out of focus, he realizes he still has a death-grip on Rogers's wrist. He hauls Rogers into his lap, looks at Rogers's face and—then away, swallowing, swallowing. He hardly knows it. All the sharp lines smashed. Blood like a veil. Rogers's pulse thumping against the Soldier's palm is the only thing keeping him on the ground. When he looks up, the agents have controlled the mob, their arms spread wide. Or maybe it's him keeping them still: they're staring, all of them, the mass of civilians crowding the stairs, pushing up against the agents' outstretched arms. They're staring at him, at Rogers's head on his leg, at Rogers's red-mottled wrist. Staring like he's—

“I'm not a monster!” he shouts at them. “I'm not, _you_ are, all of—why would you—” The last note pitches high. Seals his throat.

“Let's get him inside,” says Agent Alvarez, his hand on the Soldier's throbbing spine. The Soldier nods dumbly.

He tries to stand and falls back down, his stump flailing; he hasn't let go of Rogers. Alvarez coaxes his hand open, helps him up. The crowd has gone silent behind him. Sirens wailing in the distance. He feels frighteningly exposed, a raw nerve. His skin like his skin when he was burned to crackling. He gets one of Rogers's arms over his shoulders and Alvarez gets the other, dragging Rogers inch by inch up the stairs. The Soldier feels useless, Alvarez measuring his pace for the Soldier's benefit alone, his weak stumbling steps, trying not to step on his tube where it trails between them. His pack in Alvarez's free hand.

An agent slips in after them and shuts the door. Romanova, the Soldier realizes, as she shouts something at them that doesn't quite compute. He finds himself lowering Rogers to the floor in sync with Alvarez anyway, his body responding to whatever his brain ignored. Romanova swarms over Rogers like she's going to kiss him, her hands moving over his abdomen, his ribs, his collarbones. Up to his face, which she grabs with both hands. “Hold him,” she says, and Alvarez gets there first, stabilizing Rogers's skull as Romanova expertly sets his swelling nose. Bone grating in the wood-paneled hall. Acid in the Soldier's throat.

“He's good to move,” says Romanova, lifting Rogers by the legs. Alvarez loops his elbows under Rogers's armpits and begins to back up the stairs. The Soldier thinks about getting up; thinks about rising from the corner he's crumpled into, someone's plaster umbrella stand digging into his scapula. He doesn't move until Romanova barks: “Barnes!” from halfway up the staircase like she's snapping a pencil. It has him scrambling so fast to obey that he bashes his elbow on the wall. He slings the Joey over his shoulder and follows. Romanova whispers “Sorry,” as he passes them. For a minute, it shakes him loose from the fog.

Romanova spares him from hovering uselessly. “Bedroom,” she says, “Find an old blanket,” and he's dragging one over Rogers's quilt as they stagger into the room. They settle Rogers with difficulty, Romanova growling under her breath. One of Rogers's feet slips off the edge of the bed. The Soldier moves it back where it belongs, shuddering at the feel of the slack joint; he almost drops it. Dead weight. He forces himself to touch Rogers's wrist with two fingers: a slow and steady beat.

“The doctor's coming. Hey,” Romanova says, grabbing his arm, ignoring his flinch. Alvarez is gone. “You can stay with him after, but right now you're a mess, and I'm going to need you to step back, calm down, and clean up.”

“Who's going to clean him up?” the Soldier asks.

“I will,” says Romanova. “Go.”

He catches himself in the bathroom mirror and jerks backwards, hitting the door; he's covered in Rogers's blood. Maybe some of his own. There's a small split in his eyebrow he doesn't remember receiving. He strips frantically between the bathroom and his bedroom, startling an agent coming down the hall. Wipes his face cursorily with his ruined shirt before he changes. His hand shaking and shaking.

Rogers is moderately less gory when the Soldier returns. Romanova catches the Soldier at the door, murmuring, “It's worse than it looks.” He pulls away from her. Stares at Rogers's swollen eyes, his purpling forehead. He looks worse than—the room spins. Fire. Someone speaking. The wet crack of breaking bone. He couldn't feel it but he could hear it. He clenches a fist he doesn't have and sways towards the wall.

Romanova's promised doctor, a man with long white hair tied low at his nape, is shining a light into Rogers's eyes. “Concussion for sure,” the doctor is saying, as the Soldier sits on the small bench where Rogers often puts on his shoes, “But no skull fracture, I don't think. Even so, the last time he _did_ have one the cerebral edema cleared up in just under fifteen minutes, so I don't think we'll worry about getting an ambulance down here. Keep an eye on his pupillary dilation, at any rate. If either one blows, you'll want a helicopter already on the roof.” The doctor puffs air through his mustache. “Otherwise, God bless the serum. Some fractures, and I'm not thrilled about these abdominal contusions, but the only break is that left metacarpal,” the doctor says, miming cowering, covering his head; the Soldier feels like he's been doused in ice water. “I'll splint it and get out of your hair.”

“I'll give you a hand,” Romanova says.

Time freezes and jumps: the doctor is in front of the Soldier. The Soldier hits the back of his head on the wall.

“Whoa there, son,” the doctor says. “Easy. Agent Romanoff wants me to check you over, but I'll scram if you'd rather.”

The Soldier doesn't know what to say. He feels blank. Offers his wrist. The doctor accepts it obligingly, taking his pulse even though it can't possibly be useful.

“He'll be all right,” the doctor says, replacing the Soldier's hand in his lap. Dry, cool fingers pulling up the Soldier's eyelids with exaggerated gentleness, prodding the cut. “Don't you worry. That foolhardy bastard once broke in and out of my hospital with a gut wound and a broken face to take flowers to his lady friend, so you best believe he'll be back to annoying the living piss out of you before you know it.” The doctor pats him on the shoulder. “Trick is, you've got to yell at him, or he won't feel sorry at all.”

The Soldier manages a tight smile.

The doctor pats him again. “Rest,” he says.

When the doctor is gone, the Soldier puts his face in his hand.

Rolling shudders go through him in waves, from his head to his toes. Teasing a live wire. He feels like it: like he's been electrocuted. His insides cooked and gummy and the trembling under his skin. Romanova's shoeless footsteps shushing closer on the carpet. She touches his knee and he almost kicks her in the face. Crouching nearer than he'd estimated her to be. She steps around him and sighs, dropping onto the bench next to him. He can tell without following her eyes that she's looking at Rogers.

“Well,” she says, “That went wrong in just about every possible way.”

The Soldier puts his head back in his hand.

“The media team's handling fallout,” Romanova continues. “They'll be able to spin it in Steve's favor, no question. Your case will depend on reception. You didn't hurt anyone, though. So that's a plus.” She scuffs her feet against the carpet, one after the other. “You wouldn't have been able to stop him and you were the one who pulled him out safely,” she says. “Remember that.”

The Soldier says, “I know.”

She touches his sore spine, dragging her hand up-up-up as she stands. Her fingers rest lingeringly on his scalp, drawing together and off at his crown, as though she's pulling something out of him.

“Come on,” she says. “You heard Dr. Williams. You need to rest.”

He rises to his feet when she directs him. Follows her. They're nearly at the door when he says, “No.” Staticky wash of panic, reflexive: you don't disobey the—he shakes his head, jerking it to the side so hard it hurts his neck. “No,” he says. Her blank unreadable face. “I'm not leaving him.”

She doesn't sigh, or manhandle him, or order him out of the room. She walks over to the bed instead, patting the unoccupied side of the quilt. “Here, then. So you can keep an eye on him.”

The Soldier climbs onto the bed and makes himself small, as far from Rogers as he can get without sliding off. He's scared he'll fall asleep and kick Rogers the way he almost kicked Romanova. He waits, tense, until Romanova leaves, pulling the door to but not closed, and then he reaches out for Rogers's right wrist. The pulse under his fingers. Slow and steady. He cranes his neck to watch the clock: thirty-four beats per minute. A little faster than normal, for Rogers. He wonders what it means. Is Rogers suffering? In pain? Does his heart beat faster when he's healing? Rogers's face is relaxed, his eyelids still. He doesn't quite look like himself, even clean. There's a small streak of blood someone missed, where his earlobe connects to his jaw.

It's La Cueva, all over again.

The reasonable voice in the back of his head says: no, not exactly, not quite. This time, everyone involved was informed as to the risks; this time, his head was out of the sand. He should have known HYDRA would come for him then, but he couldn't have known the crowd would become violent today. There wasn't any warning at all. Romanova is right: he couldn't have stopped Rogers. No one is dead. But it doesn't change the fact that Rogers is hurting because of him. Even when he's hobbled, even when he isn't killing people, he's dangerous. And it's never him who seems to pay the price.

It isn't fair, he thinks childishly. It's such an asinine, selfish impulse, it almost makes him feel sick. It isn't fair. It's as though he's hit the limit on the amount of misery a human being can take in a single lifetime, and now it's spilling out onto anyone around him, indiscriminate. Harrison. STRIKE Beta. Tank. Six dead girls. The agent at the door. Rogers. He's radioactive; he's a leaky cell. He'd give anything to figure out how to make it _stop_.

The Soldier doesn't remember closing his eyes, but he's awake like a shot when Rogers groans, sliding his wrist out from under the Soldier's fingers as he reaches up blindly to touch his battered face. The Soldier sits up and pins it to the bed before he knows what he's doing, irrationally terrified that Rogers will press too hard, break his own bones. He releases Rogers's hand when he realizes the stupidity of it, flushing with shame. For more reasons than one: the room is dark aside from the bedside lamp, on its lowest setting. It must be into the night. Hours and hours. Someone must have come in and turned it on and he didn't hear a thing.

“God,” Rogers mumbles.

“Don't move,” the Soldier pleads. “Don't—don't move. I'll get—”

“Hey,” Rogers says. He opens his eyes. Bloodshot, the pupils not quite even.

The Soldier swallows hard. “What.”

“C'mere,” Rogers says. Bleary, but not slurring. When the Soldier shuffles closer, Rogers grabs his hand. Not like he's shaking it: like the youngest girls in La Cueva used to do when they were making a promise. They usually spat into their palms first, but the pose is the same. It'd been funny, watching ten-year-old girls playing at being formal, their solemn little faces. It doesn't seem so funny now.

“Breathe,” Rogers says, which is—ridiculous, it's grotesque, it should be the other way around. Rogers squeezes the Soldier's hand; it feels like putting his fingers in a socket. “J. I'm okay. Hey. How's that line go? _It was worth a wound, it was worth many—_ ”

“Shut up,” the Soldier whispers. “God, don't say that.”

“You callin' me a liar?”

“Shut _up_.”

“I can't look as bad as all that,” Rogers says. “Get me a mirror. Can't possibly be as bad as the time Sean Flanagan threw a brick at my face in eighth grade.”

“Did the brick have _metal fingers_?” the Soldier says. Rogers blinks. “You looked like you were _dead_ , you looked worse than when I beat you to a pulp on the fucking helicarrier, Rogers, you weren't _moving_ , I couldn't decide whether I was gonna have to call the priest or the coffin maker—”

“J—”

“—and I _told you_ ,” he snarls, “I thought I fuckin' told you not to do that to me again the last time you tried to solve a problem with your face, and you ain't hard of hearing no more so don't you fuckin' dare tell me you weren't listening—”

“ _J—_ ”

“—but I told you in Picardie and I'll tell you again, you reckless son of a bitch—you—” The Soldier shudders; gags. Chokes: “Jesus _Christ_.”

“It's okay, it's—”

“ _Fuck_.”

“It's—no, don't—”

The Soldier tries to lunge off the bed, but Rogers yanks him back. The Soldier loses his balance as Rogers tries to twist up to meet him. They collapse in a heap, groaning. Rogers's ribs, probably; the Soldier's spine. The Soldier rolls off Rogers to tremble and pant beside him, prevented from going any further by Rogers's death grip on his hand. He shoves his face hard into the quilt, eyes shut tight. Rogers moves closer with only a small noise. Their fingers tangled on his collarbone. The point of his shoulder pressing warm against the Soldier's temple.

“We don't have to talk about it,” Rogers says unsteadily, “If you don't want to.”

“Never,” the Soldier tells the blanket.

“Never ever. In fact, I don't know what you're talking about. _Je ne parle pas l'anglais_.”

The Soldier tries to laugh and makes a sound like a gasp. He breathes. “You scared the shit out of me,” he says. He makes the mistake of glancing up: Rogers is shocky and wan under the fading bruises, but he's trying to smile. It looks alarming. “I was watching from the window when you—when it happened. I thought—”

“Sorry,” Rogers says. His mouth twists. “I let my guard down, I didn't expect it at all. Is Nat angry?”

“Depends on what the news says.”

“Right, of course. I should...”

Unbelievably, Rogers tries to sit up. The Soldier pushes their clasped hands down as gently as he can, pinning him in place. “Fuck's sake, I'll do whatever needs doing, just—stop moving. You need to _rest_.”

“So do you.” Rogers's gaze feels a little too searching. He adds, softer: “Stay?”

“Make me,” the Soldier says, like he isn't ready to punch anyone who tries to stop him. Rogers squeezes the Soldier's hand and jerks his chin at the other pillow, which seems awfully far away. The Soldier pins the corner between his stump and his neck, dragging it down, shifting so the edge of his port stops digging into his skin. Rogers, blessedly, settles, easily enough that the Soldier wonders if the doctor gave Rogers a sedative.

“Brooklyn,” Rogers mumbles suddenly, sounding three-quarters asleep, “In Brooklyn places were always—small. No secrets. Thin walls. Knew what everybody was doin'. Always hear somebody breathin'.”

“Shh,” the Soldier says.

“Future's so private 'n...buttoned-up. Can't hear anybody no more.”

“Go to sleep.”

“This is nice,” Rogers says. “S'nice.”

 _Stab me in the heart, why don't you_ , the Soldier thinks, almost angrily. He fights two warring urges; to shake Rogers awake and tell him to quit the nostalgia, he's never going to go back, dwelling on it's just going to twist the knife—and the urge to shelter Rogers from the cold, lonely future, to find a warm place for him, somehow, a cave of wonders where nothing hurts. He feels Rogers's head tilt, hears the scrape of his hair on the other pillow. A snuffle. It makes the Soldier feel protective. Viciously tender. It's a feeling he doesn't think he's ever held in his body before, not unless Barnes—

No.

It scares the life out of him, that feeling. Everything he's cared for has been taken away from him, in one way or another, and that was when he was stronger. He doesn't have the fortitude to lose something else. To lose another friend. Please, he thinks irrelevantly, to whatever's listening: please, let me have this, let me keep this one thing, this one little spark. I'll do anything. I'll do anything.

“Can I tell you something?” the Soldier whispers, once he's dead certain that Rogers is asleep.

Rogers doesn't so much as twitch.

“Everyone keeps telling me I'm a good person,” he says, so quietly he can hardly hear himself. The click of his tongue against his teeth louder than his voice. “I'm not. I'm glad you crashed the plane. I'm glad HYDRA wanted you dead. Or I never would've met you.”

 

☙

 

The Joey's alarm wakes them just before 1100, both of them jerking in opposite directions like startled cats. “Go back to sleep,” the Soldier tells Rogers, pressing down on his shoulder, and miraculously, he does. His healing factor has worked double-duty overnight, his injuries still disquieting, but half as bad as they were. He looks seriously roughed up instead of close to death. The Soldier's feeling pretty rough himself, even aside from his still-achy spine. He can't remember the last time he slept in so late.

Hill is in the living room when the Soldier comes out, slouched into the sofa with her ankles crossed on the coffee table, watching what appears to be children's cartoons on mute. She looks at him, and then at the clock.

“Good timing,” she says. “I was just about to start banging pots and pans. I assume he's breathing. Why were your TV remotes inside the kettle?”

“Because Rogers never uses it,” the Soldier says, unhooking his tube and leaving everything on the kitchen counter. He wants intel before he wants calories. He sits on the edge of the coffee table; sitting on the sofa with Hill feels too casual. “How bad is it?”

“Somebody's a pessimist.”

“Fuck off.”

“Hey, that was commiseration, not criticism.” Hill tosses the remote end over end like a knife. “It's neither one thing nor the other, really. The people who hate Steve mostly still hate Steve, and the people who hate you mostly still hate you, but there's a bigger gray area in the middle now. People are asking questions more than they're accepting other people's answers. Is that an improvement? I guess we'll have to see.”

“So,” the Soldier says, “You've got nothing.”

“We've got nothing,” Hill agrees.

“Then why are you _here_?”

“His TV's bigger than mine,” she says, and finger-guns at him with the remote when he glares. “Sleeping Beauty duty. Doc's orders. But now that you're awake, I can go drown myself in paperwork.”

“Enjoy,” he says dryly. Hill turns off the TV and gathers her things, while the Soldier thinks about getting up and doesn't. Rubs his eyes, his forehead, up past his hairline. He needs to shave. In the next day or two, maybe, when he no longer feels like he has twenty-pound weights strapped to his remaining limbs.

“Oh,” Hill says, “And you made the front page,” and drops what sounds like a newspaper in front of him. He waits until she's gone to open his eyes.

His breath catches in his throat.

 _WINTER SOLDIER—MISJUDGED?_ the headline shouts. The Soldier hadn't noticed the camera. The photographer might win an award for best candid shot, he thinks numbly, staring at his own pixilated face. Rogers is sprawled in the Soldier's lap like something from a religious painting. Eyes closed, mouth open. His battered face, his blood cherry-red on both of them, oversaturated, almost pink. His white wrist under the Soldier's fingers and his limp hand above it. In the moment, the Soldier'd had tunnel vision, laser-focused on Rogers's face, his pulse—but it's not Rogers the Soldier's concerned with now.

He's accustomed to the way he looks these days, but he hasn't seen a photograph of himself more recent than Insight, which explains why it startles him so badly: the way he looks on the page. He's gained weight, he knows he has, he's been writing it down for Sousa, but in print he's a starving, gangly freshman not yet grown into his limbs. His shaved head, his messy beard, the hollows of his skull. His stump, coming out of the tee-shirt he'd been wearing, is white and yellow at the end where it stretches over the bone. Mangled, twisted like a dog bite. There's a smear of scarring visible further up, where his collar's stretched. A doll left too close to the fire. Is this what people saw, when he went out walking with Romanova? With Wilson? With Rogers?

And: his expression.

His lip is raised up off his open teeth. It would've been a snarl if he'd been angry, but the rest of his face is so raw and shattered it can't be anything other than a twist of pain, not with those wide, wild eyes above it. He looks like a frightened animal. Like they've caught him between screams, or between sobs, even though he wasn't doing either. He knows how he looked when the Germans burned the drawing, now. How he looked in the chair. How he looked, in La Cueva, crouched over Tank with his hands on her belly, her blood under his plates and nails. How he looks when something he loves is being taken away.

All of that, on the front page of the _Washington Post_.

 _Oh_ , the Soldier thinks. His hand over his broken-open mouth. His lip raised up.

_Oh fuck._

The paper slides off his lap to the floor, and he doesn't make a move to retrieve it. He doesn't know if he wants to save it, hide it, or burn it.

Here it is, then: the question of the hour. Is it Barnes who feels this way, or him? Are they even discrete people? Would they be aware of it, if they were—or weren't? (Barton's voice in his head: _What if my opinions weren't mine? What if I just thought I was me and I was really somebody else? Would I even know?_ ) It's infuriating, he thinks. No; he feels too numb for that. If it was fury, he could work it out of himself. It's miserable, it's a wasteland. A person should be able to trust the things inside of themselves; their feelings should be their own. But not him. Not the body that's always, in some way, belonged to someone else, or been used by someone who thought it belonged to them, not the pulped-up brain that never caught a break—the dish, the helmet, the rod, the chair. Does it even belong to _him_ , this collection of cells? Can you claim ownership of a thing just because you live in it?

Consciousness isn't immutable, even in regular people. He knows that much; he's read about it. It can't even really be called persistent. People change as they get older, when circumstances dictate, with trauma, after children, post-injury. People get black-out drunk. People sleep. The person they are after those things is an amalgam, not a new thing but an evolution of a thing, a tree that grows and grows. A person wakes up every morning a collective, the sorting system in their brains going through the recordings and telling them what to do, what to be, how to act. If they remember wrong, if the sorting system corrupts the recordings, it stands to reason they'd wake up different; surely it's happened. But what happens when there's two filing cabinets? What happens when most of one is burned? And what happens when you shuffle what remains together? What is it that defines the borders of a person? Who is thinking when he's thinking?

So. Options. He needs to—

He needs to not be staring at the fucking paper while he does this.

Into the closet, two doors between him and everything else, and he refuses to be ashamed. This isn't a fearful retreat, it's an expedition into the unknown. Science, even, if he's feeling charitable. Science like Zola would have defined science. Science that bleeds.

So. Option One. His feelings aren't his feelings, and are in fact Barnes's feelings. It's Barnes who's frantic with worry over Rogers, Barnes who cares. Hypothesis: enough of Barnes's personality was wiped out in the fall to provoke a sensation of cleanness, of starting over, a new seed—but the soil remained, and subtly effected the tree. The tree being the Soldier. Or Barnes 2.0, or whoever he is in this analogy. If this is true, the Soldier's been making decisions based on Barnes's experiences, his recordings. Barnes's memory is mostly gone, but the impulses that created those memories remain. The Soldier is a parasite clinging to Barnes's moral framework.

Option Two. The other way around. Hypothesis: Barnes was overwritten after the fall, full stop, and the Soldier's feelings are his feelings, and any resemblance to Barnes is purely coincidental; they're both white males raised primarily in Western culture who've gone through significant trauma in a military context. That they differ in many ways is logical—they're two separate people, after all. Some of the neural connections that made Barnes a person are still hanging around, but weakly: flashes of color and light, film clips, not enough to change who the Soldier is. Like how watching a movie several times wouldn't make him think like the hero, not unless they already shared an outlook.

Option Three. Some of his feelings are Barnes's and some of his feelings are his and it doesn't _matter_ , really, does it, because he can't scoop Barnes out of his brain and he can't turn himself off to give Barnes the floor and he'll never be able to tell who's who, in the end, so the entire fucking experiment is an exercise in futility. Their borders are fuzzy: and so what. So what? So what if this body has held multitudes? So what if the Soldier is some reconstructed chimerical mess? So what if this savage tenderness stems from Barnes's memories? It's not as though it isn't real; it's not as though the Soldier isn't feeling it. His fears were made by other people and he doesn't fret about those, doesn't lay awake at night wondering if his terror of shocks to the brain is _valid_.

But where does that leave him, exactly?

The Soldier presses his knuckles against his mouth. Rocks his hand back and forth; bites the far side, experimentally, but it doesn't make his thoughts any sharper. He feels as though he's reaching out into the void, turning over stones: is this the answer? is this? is this? without having asked the right question yet.

Here's a fact: everyone who's entered the Soldier's orbit has been hurt. Even if he dispenses with self-pity, he still has to acknowledge that his presence is the trigger. He isn't poison, isn't cursed, but danger follows him all the same. Some people want to destroy him, some want to use him, but all of them see him as a weapon, a commodity, a thing. A rare animal they'd kill to collect.

Here's another fact: he'd rather die than see even one more person come to harm.

He pulls out his phone and texts Romanova. Laboriously, one letter at a time, no room for hesitation. The plan is vestigial; unformed. She'll certainly have plenty of room for improvement, but he has the feeling she enjoys it—the preparation, the troubleshooting, the little details.

Once he's laid out what he wants from her, he says, _Will you do it?_

 _If I have a good reason_ , Romanova responds.

(It's when you'd die for somebody, right? he says to Queenie, and Queenie says: Manito, dear, dying is easy. Living is so much harder.)

He says: _I think I've got a pretty good one_.

As if the last twenty-four hours haven't provided enough shocks, he drags himself out of his room some forty-odd minutes later to find Rogers cross-legged in the armchair, gazing down at the _Post_ with two black eyes and a pinched expression. The Soldier hadn't banked on Rogers being out of bed yet; he'd planned to make the paper disappear. He feels his heart stutter, feels himself think _no, no, no—_

“Jeez,” Rogers says. “I thought you were exaggerating. I don't think I looked half as bad as this the time Hulk accidentally collapsed a parking garage on me. Poor guy. I thought he was gonna cry.”

Breathe, the Soldier tells himself. “I never exaggerate,” he says, and tries to feign nonchalance as he carries his neglected Joey over to the cabinets, pulling down formula cans. “Speaking of which, why are you vertical?”

“I'm fine,” Rogers says. The Soldier leans on the counter, raising his eyebrows and idly wishing he had another arm to cross. Rogers drops the paper and stands up. “Seriously! You don't believe me? C'mon. Over here. Lindy hop, pal. I'll prove it to you.”

The Soldier sighs and stalks over. Rogers spreads his arms in invitation, letting the Soldier pick who's leading, presumably, but the Soldier reaches between them and pulls Rogers's shirt up to his neck instead. He takes a long look at the bruises and scrapes he reveals, then regains eye contact, pointedly.

“Cosmetic,” Rogers argues, exactly like the Soldier expected.

“Sure,” he says, dropping Rogers's shirt. “Tell me, sweetheart, did that excuse _ever once_ work on Barnes?” The way Rogers scowls tells him all he needs to know. “Yeah, well, me neither.”

“It 'worked' on Bucky because he never bothered asking,” says Rogers. “You know who it didn't work on? My _mother_.”

“Get used to calling me Mom, then,” the Soldier says, returning to the counter. It's not long before he hears Rogers pad into the kitchen, and a moment later there's strong arms around his waist and a chin hooked over his shoulder. It almost startles him badly enough to drop the half-primed tube.

“I really scared you, huh,” Rogers says quietly. The Soldier swallows grit. “I mean, you said, but. Sorry. I shouldn't tease.”

The Soldier plugs the tube into his port and says, “You know what's teasing? This shitty apology hug, that's what,” and when he turns he has an armful of Rogers doing his best impression of a boa constrictor. The Soldier says “oof” and hugs back about as hard as he can manage, but probably not as hard as Rogers wants. He's sure he's hurting Rogers's ribs; Rogers is definitely digging into the Soldier's aching back with the splint. An electric thrill goes through him when Rogers tucks his face into the Soldier's neck, sighing. What the hell, he thinks, and does the same. He might be the worst person in the world, but he's goddamn well going to enjoy it while it lasts.

“I'll put up with it as long as it takes, but I'll be glad when all this is over,” Rogers says, when he lets the Soldier go.

“Yeah,” the Soldier says. He tries to smile. “Me too.”

 

☙

 

At midnight, he moves.

In his pocket is the letter he wrote in the afternoon, while Rogers was on the phone being harangued by Romanova and then taking a very put-upon nap. Over his shoulder, the duffel bag he packed after Rogers had stopped glaring at the ceiling and actually fell asleep. It's heavy, digging painfully into the scars on his left shoulder, but he needs his right arm to keep it steady, to stop it from slipping and bashing into things. Rogers's door is closed most of the way, his room cave-dark, the way he likes it. If the Soldier was like Rogers, he could probably hear Rogers breathing, hear his heartbeat, maybe hear his eyes twitching under their lids. The Soldier never asked Rogers what he dreams about, when he isn't having his very audible nightmares. Rogers has been having less of them recently, the Soldier realizes, with an extra pang of guilt he doesn't need.

He plans to leave the letter propped up against a glass on the island, where it'll be visible from several angles. He'd thought about sliding it under Rogers's door, or leaving it on the floor in the hall, but he's frightened that the former would wake Rogers up and the latter might be missed. When he enters the kitchen, he hears a click, and the light over the stove comes on. He nearly jumps out of his skin before he recognizes Romanova's dimly-lit silhouette, the blaze of her hair.

He's about to hiss at her for not waiting in the alley, for scaring the life out of him, when Rogers leans out of the shadows.

The Soldier's skin suddenly feels three sizes too small.

“He was waiting for me on the fire escape,” Romanova says, without emotion, although it must have rankled her. She walks out of the kitchen. As she passes the Soldier, she murmurs, “I'll be outside.”

The side of Rogers's face is barely illuminated by the stove light, where he's sitting on one of the bar stools at the island. Just where the Soldier was going to leave the letter. In the too-sharp lines between light and dark, Rogers's bruises look worse than they are. His expression isn't angry, or disappointed, or—anything, really, which hurts more than the Soldier ever expected anything to hurt. Recollected pain is always less immediate, milder in retrospect, so the way he remembers it isn't as bad as it was, but he'd still rather cut off his arm a third time than go through this.

“She told me the plan,” Rogers says. His hands dangling together between his knees, one splinted, one tucked into a fist. Bare heels on the rungs, his toes turned under. “It's a good plan, actually. Publicly stage your death using O'Malley, wait until the media explosion dies down, assume a new identity. I mean, we'd have had to move to sell the act, but. That was in the cards anyway, if I'm honest.”

“You're not a good actor,” the Soldier says. Fuck, he hates himself. “Not for this. You know you're not.”

“This is because I quoted Conan Doyle at you, isn't it,” Rogers says. “You were gonna pull a Reichenbach on me.”

“I wrote you a letter, it wouldn't have—why'd you have to go and make it hard, huh?” Trying to make his voice soft, but it still sounds like something scraped off the bottom of a tire. He takes a step forward, daring. “It's—I wanted to protect you. It was going to be a clean break.”

“A _clean break_?” Rogers finally looks up, finally wears an emotion, and it's incredulity. “Me stuck wherever I end up, thinking about you being—god knows—and you, out there, worrying about me? That's not a clean break, J. That's a slow bleed. Especially—”

“Don't,” the Soldier says.

“Thought I was imagining things,” Rogers says. “Until I saw the _Post_. You didn't mean to leave it out, right? That was, uh.” He shakes his head. “Wow. And then I woke up and thought I heard you doing something in the kitchen. Figured it out when I checked your cabinet. What I don't _get_ ,” he growls, “Is why you couldn't just tell me. I'd've helped, I'd've understood, you couldn't possibly think I'd—”

“I thought it might be easier,” the Soldier says, “If you hated me.”

Rogers buckles. His face and his shoulders and even his long feet, all folding inwards. The Soldier sways towards Rogers and stops himself just in time, just before he reaches out. He's not sure he can and still drag himself away. The duffel strap digging, digging, into the meat of his shoulder.

“Thing is,” Rogers says, in a voice that's far too even, “Thing is, I'm selfish. I lost Bucky, and god knows that was hard enough, but I can't lose you. I couldn't bear,” he says, “Losing both of you,” and he opens his clenched hand.

The Soldier, still shifting his feet and twitching with the effort of not taking that final step, goes completely still.

“In the eighties, Peggy bought a bungalow in Sussex,” Rogers says. He looks down, bouncing the keys in his palm. There's a folded piece of paper beneath them. “It was gonna be her little summer place, maybe her retirement home, but she worked until the day they made her stop.” Rogers smiles at his hands. “Kids take after her; they're workaholics too. It's always empty—I asked. Susan said so, when she gave me the keys last year. She said it was a shame nobody lived in it, maybe I'd like to, you know. Use it as a base, if I was ever in England. It could use some work,” Rogers says diplomatically, like it fucking matters. “Nice neighbors. It has a—a garden,” and his voice cracks on the last word.

“Jesus Christ, Rogers,” the Soldier says, and he can't, he can't—but he is; Rogers looking up as the Soldier drops the duffel bag on the floor and steps between his knees, his eyes reflecting wet in the half-light. The Soldier reaches out to touch the keys and doesn't quite make it. Taps against the edge of the shield callus. Rogers's fingers curl to trap the Soldier's.

“You don't have to stay there forever,” Rogers says. “I just—”

“I know,” the Soldier says.

“—wanted to make sure you were safe.” Laughter, short and sharp. “Which I guess is exactly what you were trying to do for me, so. Aren't we a fucking pair.”

“Couple of stupid assholes,” the Soldier manages.

Rogers displays a flicker of a smile that never reaches his eyes. “Ma would've had us both by the ears. She never did have any patience for subtlety.”

“Rogers,” the Soldier says helplessly, feeling as though he's trying to stop a freight train with his bare hands, “You're not—you don't—”

Rogers brings their curled-together hands to his mouth. The Soldier slams his eyes shut like he's about to take a bullet. It still feels like one, right in the sternum, when Rogers kisses his knuckles.

“Don't tell me,” Rogers says, “What I don't do.”

“This is a punishment,” the Soldier realizes, as Rogers tucks the keys and the folded paper under his limp fingers, squeezing them together like he's worried the Soldier might drop them. It's a distinct possibility. The Soldier puts them in his pocket so he won't, taking the letter out as he does, placing it on the island beside Rogers's elbow. He feels—insubstantial. Unmoored in time and space. This kitchen can't be the same kitchen he stumbled through in January, half-dead from blood loss and withdrawal. Can it? It's too small. It's too warm.

“More like a warning,” says Rogers.

“More like fuck you,” the Soldier says, and Rogers finally smiles for real, his face unfolding, which is exactly what the Soldier wanted: so he can remember that, not the awful twist of pain he'd put there. God, but he doesn't deserve this, the way Rogers is looking at him. He doesn't. Not at all, he thinks fiercely. But he's damn well going to try.

“You should go,” Rogers says. “Nat's gonna get impatient.”

“When is she not?” the Soldier asks, hauling the duffel back over his shoulder. The effort makes him grunt. Rogers moves as though he's going to help, and then jerks back, contrite.

“I don't know,” Rogers says. “When I was a kid, I always thought spies would be more zen.”

“Life's full of disappointments.”

“Tell me about it. No flying cars, no starships, popcorn still costs too much at the movies, and all spies are neurotic. It's enough to make a fella find a time machine.”

“Hey,” the Soldier says. He taps his knuckles against Rogers's cheek, a parody of a punch. Rogers's eyes go soft; they shouldn't, considering the last time the Soldier had one of his hands in this position, fire above them and water below. _Hey_ , he wants to say to the Asset, to the scared, screaming version of himself poised over Rogers, desperate to make the pain stop: _Hey, it's okay, it'll be okay. It won't be like this forever. You get to live, you know that? You get to live._

“Don't be a stranger,” Rogers whispers.

“Steve?”

He goes very still. “Yeah?”

“Thank you,” the Soldier says.

And then he's gone.

Into the alley, into the night, into Romanova's waiting car, him in the front and his bag crammed in the back with her guns and her stingers and her catsuit laid over all of it like a piece of modern art, ready for the showdown that's coming tomorrow, pistols at dawn and a kid just out of spy school pretending to die for somebody who's never been dead, or who died once already, or who died more than once: for his country, in a ravine, in the snow, under a scalpel, on a table, in a river reaching down into the darkness. Pain's never as bad as you remember. Romanova's tires squealing in the night. She has the top down for no reason at all, and if he throws his head back he can see the dim stars. Look, he thinks, they didn't burn it out of me, I haven't forgotten: there's Ursa Major, there's Cassiopeia, there's Polaris, north-by-north-east and the Atlantic beside them, away from the city and into the hills; it's still in me, he thinks, I remember, I remember, I—


	9. and death i think is no parenthesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something Steve's ma used to say was: When life knocks you down, you always stand up.

> _I guess this is goodbye._
> 
> _Maybe you saw this coming, maybe you didn't, but fact is, I did, I've seen what's on the horizon and it's a whole world of pain. They're not going to let go. They're not going to forget. And eventually, no matter how careful we are, there's going to be a bullet out there with my name on it. Given my track record of getting people hurt, and your track record of putting yourself in harm's way, it's not me that thing's going to hit, and I don't like those odds. A wise lady once told me it's not who you'd die for—it's who you'd live for. So I'm going to live, for both our sakes._
> 
> _False hope's a poison and I won't give you any. Your agent friends are helping me disappear—don't be too mad at them—but after that, they won't know any more than I do now. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I don't know what the future holds. And when I say I don't think we'll ever see each other again, I mean that. I don't mean I'm dubious, or I'm hopeful. I just don't fucking know. This is all too likely a world where it's never going to be safe to use the 'and' in you and me._
> 
> _You deserve better than what time stole from you, Steve. It took and took and took. I hope to god it gives you something back when I'm gone._

 

 

* * *

 

Steve moves to the Tower, of course.

For a multitude of reasons, he can't stay in DC. For a start, no one can safely move into the building while he's still living in it, because the press are all over him like barnacles in the wake of the Winter Soldier's “death.” Locals are suffering and it isn't fair of him to impose on them. New York is his home, and if he's honest with himself, he does miss it. And there's Tony, peer-pressuring him with gorgeous photographs of the view from his rent! free! suite! because Tony is and forever will be a gigantic child with insecurity issues. The last straw is Miss Potts, who shows up with an elegant automated charity plan that allows Steve to donate monthly what he would normally spend on rent. She has PowerPoints. It's very convincing.

Mostly, though, he doesn't want to keep living in the place where James was, and now isn't.

There's a certain sense in which Steve's almost—grateful. That they're apart. It'd sound crazy if he tried to explain it to anybody else; hell, it sounds crazy to _him_ , but it doesn't make it not true. It was manic, like trying to dance to a band playing triple-time. Both of them trapped in the same few rooms, forced proximity, heightened emotions: it was like what he suspects might have happened anyway, if they'd been given time and space to work themselves out, but all crammed into a couple of frantic weeks, both of them desperate for distraction and affection and not knowing how to ask for it. He has a notion that James felt it too, the too-muchness of everything. Steve hadn't been capable of resisting that parting gesture, because what if they never saw each other again? ( _Always so dramatic_ , Peggy said once, and she...wasn't wrong.) But Steve had seen—James had been so raw, and—it had hurt him. It's a pretty wild assumption, but Steve can't help wondering whether James, in that moment, had felt the same thing Steve had when the mask came off. Like every nerve being punched at once. Like a body wasn't designed to feel that much of anything.

If— _when_ they get another chance, he'll come at it slower. He'll try to do it right. Not that he knows how, but. He can learn.

And then there's Tony.

Steve's bewildered, over and over, by how the James thing is apparently a complete non-issue when it comes to Tony, in all its iterations. Steve forgets, when he's irritated at Tony, that the guy is really perceptive, oddly _delicate_ about certain things, even if in person he appears to bulldoze over them with the subtlety of a rhinoceros in a shopping mall. It's a cover, Steve's learning, for at least a few of Tony's neuroses, and it makes Steve want to go back in time and give Howard a shake and yell: _What happened to you?_ But he suspects, in his more honest moments, that he really doesn't want to know the answer.

“So your guy came back from the dead, except not,” Tony says, after he pries most of the story out of Steve one late night in the lab, a month in to what Steve's trying and failing to think of as a sabbatical. He's holding DUM-E at a stable angle while Tony fixes some imperceptible problem with its treads, and DUM-E's clinging to Steve's arm like it's a kid at the doctor's office. “Wow, hey, that sucks. Identity, am I right? We think we're pretty solid things, but we're not so much, as it turns out. We're complicated. Brains, though! Brains are easy. You can make a brain. We could grow a brain right here, right now. Right, Banner?”

“Leave me out of this,” Bruce says amiably, bent over his sequencing equipment.

“But _identity_ ,” Tony says, like he hasn't heard, “That's trickier, that's the bitchkitty. Because we could absolutely grow somebody a new brain, and I'm willing to bet there's six—no, I'd say _eight_ surgeons capable of doing the transplant successfully, but then you'd have a new person. The old person would be gone, finis, bye bye. We are our neurons, and all that. Hey, did you know a bunch of cultures thought consciousness came from the liver? It was totally a thing. I mean, don't get me wrong, liver's important, you're not getting very far without your _liver_ , but—”

“It's okay, we figured things out,” Steve says, trying to backtrack to the actual conversational content of Tony's ramble. “Yeah, he's technically a different person, but he's also—not. You ever meet someone and think, hey, that person reminds me of this person, but you can't figure out exactly why?”

“I assume you mean in a sense other than 'my best friend's brainwashed twin tried to kill me and now he lives in my house',” Tony says. “Sure, I can see it. So, what, you just...became friends? Buddies? _Pals_?”

“Whatever lets me say 'I miss him like hell' without getting ragged about it,” Steve says.

“You know I hate to point out the obvious, but there's a solution for that.”

Steve shakes his head. “We—I can't. Even if everything cools down, it's still up to him.”

Tony squints at him over DUM-E's chassis, which becomes an uncomfortably knowing look after about three seconds. “Damn, Rogers, you could've said it was like _that_.” Before Steve can open his mouth, Tony adds, “No wonder you didn't want to stay in that shitty walk-up. Did I ever tell you about the estate in California I never, ever visit? It's mine, _technically_ , but only by the vaguest possible—” and then DUM-E took exception to something Tony unhooked, flailed with a lot more strength than Steve was expecting, and beaned Tony in the face, bringing an end to that particular line of questioning. At least for a few days.

“So, you and Luke Skywalker,” Tony tries, the next time Steve's in the lab. “Was that a thing before he got forcibly dark-sided, or...”

“You're reference-testing me,” Steve says warningly, and Tony shrugs, unconcerned. “We, uh. Not—exactly, I mean—”

“I think the answer you want is: no, Tony, we weren't shagging in the 30's.”

“Oh, so we had to be fucking for it to count?”

“Captain _America_.”

“I'm just saying nobody would've been surprised,” Steve says, and, “You know we lived in the queerest neighborhood in Brooklyn, right?” to Tony's climbing eyebrows. “The landladies of our last place were a couple of bulldaggers who owned a bar out Harlem way. Just because we didn't chat about it over lunch with the neighbors didn't mean we didn't, you know. We weren't _Victorians_ , cripes.”

“You know, the Victorians were pretty dirty,” says Tony, which can't really be beat as a distraction tactic, because while Steve's widdershins conversations with Tony are always _educational_ , he doesn't often learn things about, say, the long and sordid history of pornographic magazines.

But the fact that Tony keeps deflecting with humor really starts to bug him.

Steve's—not concerned, exactly; at loose ends might be a better descriptor—with the fact that he knows Tony's apparently skimmed the HYDRA data-pack in its entirety, over one particularly sleepless chlorophyll-soaked fortnight, but he's never brought up That One Mission with Steve, obliquely or otherwise. Steve knows James doesn't remember it; he was pretty clear that the nineties were a no-go zone for memories, at least memories with any context, and even if he did, he wouldn't know the significance of that particular mission anyway, so it's just an _itch_ , is what Steve's saying, and it unnerves him that he doesn't know where to step.

“Oh, I was pissed,” Tony says, when Steve finally dredges up the courage to ask. “I was so mad I couldn't see straight. I'm glad you guys weren't here, tee bee aitch, because I might've done something I'd regret a lot, once the dust settled.” Tony clears his throat. “Anyway, once I found some chill, I read some more, and—well, I mean, this is for posterity so I'll be honest, I was thinking about being tortured in a cave. As you do. And how I was down there for three months. Something like that. JARVIS?”

“Three months, six days, Sir,” JARVIS supplies.

“Yeah, that, thanks.” Tony spins a thin socket wrench like a drumstick. “And _then—_ you still with me, Cap? And then, well, let's be frank, I got distracted, that happens, it's a thing, but then you came along with your...everything, and you filled in some gaps, so to speak, and I started thinking about the other thing. The thing where those assholes took a baby, a literal, actualfacts, brand new human being, and instead of teaching him that the cow goes moo and the uranium slug goes into the graphite channel—”

“I'm pretty sure that was just Howard,” Steve says.

“—instead of doing _whatever it is people do with babies_ ,” Tony says, “They taught him how to kill people instead. How to be a murderer, actually, which is different. That's not just, like, point and shoot, that's a complicated thing, right there, it would've been up-close, it would've been personal, it would've been one-on-one, they would've had to look him in the eyes when they were doing it, Steve, that is _fucked up_ , and I maybe destroyed a prototype or two while freaking out about it a little, so _no_ , to answer the question you're crawling out of your skin to ask, I'm not secretly holding a grudge against your whatever-he-is for being pointed at my parents like a goddamned _gun_ ,” he finishes, with way more emotion than Steve's really prepared to handle from a Stark at any hour, let alone at 3:17 in the morning.

Luckily, he's not obligated to do anything about it, because Tony says, very quickly, like he's trying to pretend it never happened, “And that arm. That beautiful fucking arm. Listen, I know from non-consensual body modifications, okay, so when I say a thing's beautiful, I mean _scientifically beautiful_ , I mean beautiful like the uncertainty principle is beautiful, like Cherenkov blue is beautiful, like things you shouldn't touch are beautiful, that arm was a _thing of beauty_ and it never should've been installed on a human being.”

“You know he cut it off, right?” Steve says. “With a circular saw. It was rigged to poison him if he didn't get regular maintenance.”

“What? No! When were you going to share this with the class, Cap? Christ on a bike.” Tony kicks a wheely stool across the lab. DUM-E and U chase after it. “And that, right there, tells me a whole lot about the kind of people who could turn a kid into a science experiment.”

“Your dad turned a kid into a science experiment,” Steve says, giving Tony an out to change the subject if he wants to. If there's anything Tony loves more than building things, Steve's gathered, it's complaining about his father.

“Yeah, but he also helped design the atomic bomb, and I'm pretty sure both of those things drove him off the deep end, so.” Tony rolls his eyes. “Making Weapons and Regretting It: A Biography of the Starks.” Then his eyes light up. “Hey, he wouldn't be in the market for a new arm, would he? Modular, haptic feedback, guaranteed no poison whatsoever, unless I'm allowed to test his alcohol tolerance against yours at some point during the process.”

“I asked him last year. He said no.”

“What a dweeb,” says Tony, not meaning it at all.

 

☙

 

Something Steve's ma used to say was: When life knocks you down, you always stand up.

She'd meant it as a general philosophy, but to her—and Bucky's—everlasting despair, Steve had taken it to heart as guidance for fights. He'd get back on his feet until he was out cold and couldn't. His fights are down to the occasional commonplace villain round-up these days, which Tony or Clint and Natasha can often handle on their own, and Steve more than anything wants to make her proud, so it doesn't matter how torn up he is, he'll keep on keeping on, as peacefully as he's able. _Not_ fighting, it turns out, is a lot harder than the other thing.

And Steve isn't—no matter what Tony says—pining away in the Tower like a damsel in distress. He's doing things; he's living. He's in the lab being ordered around by Tony most nights, he's got a regular Tai Chi hour with Bruce in the mornings, and he goes out for lunch at least once a week with whoever's around, usually Miss Potts, but Nat and Maria and Clint sometimes surprise him, and he gets tag-teamed by Jane and Darcy whenever they're in town. Sam's visited a few times, ostensibly for wing tune-ups, but he always hauls Steve out to Jersey to visit Deborah and the twins, and he helped Steve network with the local VFW when Steve asked him to put in a good word. Volunteering on weekends turned into painting a mural in the remodeled gender-neutral bathrooms, which turned into a graphic design position, which turned into running an informal arts-and-crafts session for the senior vets. (He'd thought it would bring the press down on everyone's heads, but New York is too cool to care about famous people who haven't done anything crazy in more than a week.)

So: he's living. He's not dead.

He feels like he's missing an organ, though, sometimes.

When winter hits, it's the worst New York's survived since 2006, the worst Steve's seen since he was nineteen, over two feet of snow in a single day and the city grinding to as much of a halt as it ever does. Steve thinks about a lot of things as he watches the storm from the safety of the ninetieth floor: how a winter like this would have killed a whole lot of people, back in his day, probably him included; how Brooklyn would have looked, whether they'd have been able to put up the Rockefeller tree in Midtown; how Ma would've stood at the window and muttered in Gaelic about how she ever could've thought staying on the east coast was a good idea, lord, whyever did we not just keep _going_ , Steven, your father was sometimes a very stupid man; but mostly, Steve thinks about James, at the end of those first terrible weeks, when he'd finally managed to drag himself out of bed. James would sometimes watch the snow falling until he fell asleep on the window seat in the parlor or the armchair in his room, and Steve always felt terrible about waking him up. Unlike in his bed, James seemed to sleep sounder with one eye on the world. While he'd been ill, and while it had lasted, the snow was the only thing James showed any genuine preference for, the only thing he visibly enjoyed, and Steve had prayed for it to continue past its usual season. Steve wishes James were here now. He'd love this.

It's not the first or the only time Steve thinks that. _I wish James was here._ Steve had thought the same about Bucky after he woke up—every billboard, every television show, every strange piece of fashion, Steve'd wanted to turn to Bucky and say: Hey! Look at that! It hurts less, thinking it about James; it doesn't scour him out. He doesn't need to reset his brain, tune it into a reality where there's a hole instead of a person. Not _I wish he wasn't dead_ , but _I wish he could see this_. Steve thinks it when Natasha tries to teach him Hebrew over Hanukkah. He thinks it when Sam takes a video of Hill fast asleep on the common room sofa, New Year's Eve, covered in confetti and spooning Lucky like they're old marrieds. He thinks it when Thor visits and brings toys from Asgard for Tony to dismantle.

In a sense he has to; he has to think in present tense. It's not as though he doesn't know the truth. He's not stupid. James had said _never_ , in the letter he'd written hours before Steve gave him the keys, but—Steve can't bring himself to wholly believe it. It's probably a mistake to keep himself warm by stoking that fire, but he sleeps easier at night, for a while, picturing James in the bungalow, safe. Happy. Surrounded by flowers. Steve doesn't know what the property looks like, or what an English garden consists of, so he Googles until he can rearrange the details in his head, until he can imagine James moving through white halls, his bare feet on age-smoothed wood, his hand in the dirt and hollyhocks against his face. It's a balm to counteract the nightmares of James afraid, alone, bloodied, with a gun in his hand. Steve doesn't know which nightmares are worse—the ones where James is pointing the gun at an enemy, or the ones where he's pointing the gun at his own head. Steve has no illusions at all that James would choose death over capture. So: wisteria. Cottages. Paperbark maples. Anything but the great unknown.

As December rolls into January, though, and as January turns into February, and as the news reverts to its usual five-minute attention span, it gets harder and harder to maintain the fantasy. In June it'll be a year. Twelve months like stones dropping in a well. Gone. And from Sussex, nothing but silence.

“Cheer up, Sad-Cap,” Tony tells him. “He probably jetted off to Tahiti to escape the country winter. I'll bet you the Phantom he shows up with a full-body tan.”

“You just want to see me to drive that boat through Manhattan,” Steve says, but his heart's not in it. He'd give anything for it to be true, for James to stroll into the Tower like he owns it, glowing. It's the moment Steve knows. A bucket of water on the fire. Something in him won't let him cling to the lie.

 

☙

 

Steve hadn't thought one way or another about his memory before the serum; it'd been perfectly average, probably, which would explain why it never crossed his mind. Nobody marvels at ordinariness. But waking up sixteen hours after the procedure, alone, in the middle of the night, every clear-distilled movement of the whole day playing in front of his eyes, fever-vivid and very nearly hallucinatory, was more frightening by far than anything else: more than the claustrophobia of the machine, more than the neon scarlet of Erskine's blood on his hands— _red_ , he remembers thinking detachedly, _that's red—_ more than the surreal wide-lensed view of the world 10 inches of height suddenly afforded him. Looking once at a map and being able to replicate it unerringly had been—uncomfortable. Like his body had been hijacked by a parasitic alien from one of those films Bucky'd loved so much.

So, he remembers the war a whole lot better than he ever wanted to. There'd never been a moment when he'd wanted to go home; on the contrary, he'd known he was exactly where he needed to be, and that they were doing good work, counteracting a few pockets of evil in the world. But he'd thought—stupidly, really; should've listened to his dad's friends when they talked around their nightmares, years after their own marginally less brutal war—he'd thought that once it was over he could let it all go. That the horror of it would slide out of him when he wasn't frantically trying to grab every scrap of intel so his brain could pencil it in for later. He'd thought he could leave it behind. His brain, it turned out, was writing it all down in stone.

It's often smell, for whatever reason, that triggers the wide-screen drop into memories he can't erase. Steve had suspected during the war that they could've used him like a bloodhound, but he'd never suggested it, being generally pretty repulsed by the idea, and (as a fallback excuse) uncertain of its realistic application in the field. Sometimes he'll get hit by it when he's out, walking into some inconvenient cloud of scents that send him hurtling right back to the killing floors or the labs. A waft of someone's perfume and somebody else's lunch, and he's deep down in the musk of unwashed bodies and the vinegary-sweet smell of decomposition, failing to gag only because his body'd seemed to have forgotten the knack.

It's weird things like that which really get to him. Nudity does it too, if he's not expecting it. All of the subjects they'd found, alive or dead, strapped to tables and crammed into cages and piled so high they'd broken the bones of the corpses below—there was occasionally a scrap of fabric on them, a jerry-rigged loincloth that seemed to breed lice more than it retained anybody's dignity, but on the whole, they were naked as the day they were born. Except Bucky. It eats at Steve sometimes, what Zola's reason might've been for it. Why Zola might have let Bucky keep his clothes. There had been a horrible articulated machine like an enormous insect, hovering over Bucky when Steve found him: was Zola only working on Bucky's mind, on that particular day? Was it some kind of signifier that Bucky was special? Chosen, in some way? Steve can't make sense of it. When Steve had finally managed to talk Bucky into a clean uniform, they'd had to cut his old things off; they were crusted hard and stuck to his skin. There'd been fibers stuck in all the abrasions on his body. It'd taken Steve over an hour to pick them all out with tweezers, Bucky complaining like a sailor to bluff through what was probably excruciating pain. But Bucky hadn't developed any infection, or even so much as a mild fever. They never talked about it, but Steve should've suspected, really. From that alone.

The moment Steve remembers most clearly, the one that tends to loop, is Bucky looking up at him in the factory. For what felt like a year and was probably only three or four seconds, Bucky'd looked at him like—looked _through_ him, really. Before Steve's ma died, before he moved in with Arnie and Skip across the hall from Bucky and his folks, they'd lived one floor up from a pair of middle-aged siblings, Flo and Dean. Steve had visited when Ma did, because he liked Flo—she sold little watercolor paintings to make ends meet when typing wouldn't cover the rent—but Dean always frightened him a little. Dean had been a construction worker, and a damned good one, if you believed the stories: a real monkey, made for climbing the girders, and strong as three men.

It'd been one of those freak accidents. A bolt fumbled from somebody's belt, half a dozen floors up, and although Dean had lived, he'd never recovered. He'd get up on command, even walk in a straight line; would use the facilities and mechanically put food in his mouth. But he never spoke, and his gaze never focused, and it seemed to Steve then that there'd been nobody inside, just a shell, a body going through the motions after the soul had gone somewhere else. The way Bucky'd looked at Steve, in that endless moment, was just like Dean and his glassy eyes. Reflective, like a dead animal's. The next second, Bucky'd tuned in like somebody upstairs had flicked the antenna, and Steve had felt a relief so powerful he'd almost gone to his knees.

For weeks, all Steve could see when he looked at James was that moment, over and over like a record left too long on a turntable. The moment when Bucky clicked on. He kept expecting it to happen again, a miraculous awakening, the endless stretch of static before you find the station, and at the end of it, recognition. It'd light up Bucky's face from the eyes, just like before, and Steve would see his best friend crawl back into his own skin like putting on a suit, and they'd walk out into the sunlight, in the future, and everything would be okay.

In other words: he was an idiot.

He'd apologized, and James had forgiven him, but he still wants to take James's hand and say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't see it for so long. I'm sorry I was blind. I'm sorry I expected you to remember. I'm sorry I wanted you to be him. It was for me, that wanting. I told myself it was for your benefit but it wasn't: it was for me. It was selfish. I'm so sorry.

It'd be too little, too late. The way he wants it is superstitious, a prophylactic measure: if he apologizes enough, in the right way, it'll somehow have prevented James from being hurt, from suffering in silence, from leaving. Steve hasn't thought this way since he was a kid, bargaining with God for his ma's life. He's outgrown the idea of a God who can be cajoled into producing wishes like a genie, maybe outgrown the idea of God as a being. Instead of an almighty person with agency, he likes the idea of God as a force, like gravity, like magnetism. A subatomic field that's present when people are kind in difficult circumstances, when people are heroes, when they're conductors of light. Tony would tell him he's abusing quantum mechanics, probably. But for all that, he still has the impulse to plead. He wants it to have been a thing that he said, when it mattered. He wants that apology to have lived in his mouth.

Now, he's not sure if he'll ever get the chance.

 

☙

 

On March 9th, a package arrives.

It's a little cardboard box, maybe big enough for a paperback. It's stamped and marked with all sorts of designations Steve hasn't seen since the war, shipped Royal Mail from some out-of-the-way post office. Maybe the kind that doesn't even have a debit machine; Steve sometimes likes to imagine there's still places like that in the world. The tissue paper inside is, for some reason, mint green. Steve stares at it for longer than he really should, trying to puzzle out whether there's some deeper meaning to it that he's not picking up.

Under the tissue paper is a set of keys.

The keys Steve gave to James. All of them, present and accounted for on their metal ring: two for the front door, one for the back, and one for the shed. Instead of the keychain that was on the ring before, an enamel bee that must've had some significance for Susan, there's a round metal charm, the kind of cheap thing you'd buy in an airport for your kids to perk them up, the kind with names on them. This one, in black on a blue background, just says: _J_.

Steve hopes he was right about the white halls and the hollyhocks. That's all he has, now: hope. He hopes James was happy, until he had to leave. Decided to leave; that's a nicer thought, isn't it, than assuming he had to run? Steve wonders how much work James did on the bungalow, in the garden. Whether the flowers are blooming stronger this year because of his care. Whether the neighbors will miss him, or if they'll even notice that he's gone. For all that James had Bucky's talent of making friends by walking into a room, he also had what Bucky hadn't: the trick of becoming invisible. An empty space. A ghost story.

 _Well, that's that_ , Steve thinks, and carefully eases himself to the floor.

He curls up as small as he can and clasps his hands behind his head so he won't lash out and damage anything. Waiting out a storm. Covering a grenade, but the grenade is him. Rage so frantic it feels like combustion. Years of it, held under his skin: HYDRA cells and bloody knuckles, the Potomac, a man on a bridge—and then before: the ice, the room, aliens pouring from the sky to destroy a city he hardly recognized, Peggy in her silver hair. A life moving from loss to loss. He feels nonsensically as though crashing the plane was some sort of—of singularity, that he's passed into a place he shouldn't be, shouldn't have _been_. As though he'd punched through the universe and made a hole. Tore through his own life, backwards and forwards, responsible for his two stillborn siblings and his illnesses and his parents' deaths and the war itself, as if it wasn't normal, as if everyone he knew hadn't been struck by the same calamities, in some form or another. Responsible for Bucky and James and everything that happened to them. He knows it's not true, he knows time passed normally when he was under the ice, people were born and lived and died while he slept, and nothing was effected by his passing out of the world for seventy years, not really, but the sense of wrongness remains. Bucky'd have called him a martyr. James would've called him an idiot.

 _Now you listen close, Steven_ , his ma would've said: _You always stand up_.

He's going to. He will.

Just not yet.

 

☙

 

In the end, he doesn't tell anybody. He thinks Natasha might have figured it out, because it's her, but she doesn't chase him to ground about it, which he doesn't know how to interpret. Does she think he's better off? Probably not; she liked James. Is she waiting him out? Maybe, but it's not like her to be tactful. She likes making him uncomfortable. Maybe this is just too close to the bone. Sometimes he feels like they're not squared up, like they never fully re-learned to trust each other after she took James away. He wants to make things right and doesn't know how.

It's Tony, actually, who ferrets it out, who edges around it for weeks until he finally says, “Okay, come on, lay it on me, did somebody _die_?”

Steve—well, he doesn't know what his face does, exactly, when he pulls the keys out of his pocket and puts them on the bench between them, but it must be pretty awful, because Tony looks appalled.

“Holy shit, that is the worst way to break up with somebody,” Tony says, and Steve has to say, “It's not a break-up, he's running for his _life_ ,” and Tony says, “Yeah, but that's pretty fucking final either way, isn't it?” and Steve—

Can't really argue with that one.

He can and does argue in the last week of August, when Tony natters for half an hour about this _conference_ , you know, it's pretty much mandatory for anybody even tangentially related to the field of artificial intelligence, it'd be an actual crime not to show up and sample the _hors d'oeuvres_ , if you know what I mean, everybody who's everybody is going to be rubbing elbows and oh, by the way, it's in London, so...

“What?” Steve says, because he'd mostly been tuning Tony out.

“London,” Tony says. “As in the capital of England, the heart of the nation, the Big Smoke, where the charter'd Thames doth flow—”

“Yeah, no, I _got_ that—”

“—and coincidentally happens to be a nice scenic train ride away from Sussex.”

Steve rubs his eyes with his fingertips for nearly a full minute before he feels like he can respond like a reasonable adult.

“Tony,” he says slowly, “You know he's not going to be there, right?”

“I know,” Tony says. “I know, I gathered, I followed the the whole thwarted-goodbye-via-keychain thing you guys are rocking, but—hey.” Steve looks up. “Look, the brain is kind of revoltingly ill-designed, like _seriously_ , if I'd been in charge I'd have made a lot of changes, like who thought having two visual systems and two auditory systems was a _good idea_ , that is mental, _literally_ , and the holding capacity of the prefrontal cortex is just—”

“Point, Tony,” Steve says.

“Sorry. Where was I? Right, what I'm saying, Cap, is that sometimes our stupid lizard parts need, you know, physical reinforcement.” Tony gestures irrelevantly with his hands; Steve idly wonders if Tony would be able to verbalize if someone held them down. “We need to look under the bed, we need to open the closet, whatever. And I'm not exactly talking out of my ass when I say: closure? Is maybe a thing that might help. Especially given your overdeveloped thinky parts, I'm so upset you won't let Bruce put you in the scanner, your cortical layers are probably—anyway. It's cool, I'm going to London, you've never been on one of my private jets, I could use an excuse to drag you around to a bunch of touristy shit you haven't seen since it was mostly rubble in '44, and you probably need to see that empty cottage so you can get on with your life. So. Wanna come?”

Steve stares. Tony gives him a thumbs-up.

“No,” Steve says.

 

☙

 

Saying no to a Stark, Steve will reflect later, as he watches the English countryside roll past, is sort of like saying no to a praise-motivated Labrador: it'll grovel and mope until you thoroughly convince it that it's not a failure to dog-kind, preferably by allowing it to do the thing it was trying to do in the first place.

Or maybe that's just Lucky.

Tony means well, Steve's sure of that much, and—okay, he's not _wrong_ , because on the train Steve feels a swell of purposefulness for the first time in ages, as though he finally has a mission with a solid set of parameters. First: don't get recognized. Darcy'd helped him dye his hair dark brown before he left, and she'd offered him tips on how to disguise his gait (“walk like your balls are too big for your shorts” had been a particularly memorable one) and some of her bodybuilder brother's clothes; he'd taken the clothes, if not the advice. They hang grievously, and make him look smaller and softer than he is. Second, and more important: go to Sussex, find the bungalow, walk through the garden in James's footsteps, and then go back to London so Tony can show him the delights of the Science Museum, the London Eye, and pub food that isn't rationed. He has to do this so he can let James go. Steve feels almost as though he's holding onto an unfathomably long leash, so long he can't see the end of it, but at the end is James, tugging, trying to get loose so he can dive safely underground. Sometimes loving something means letting it go. Didn't somebody famous say that?

 _That's Britney Spears, Steve_ , Tony says when Steve texts him. Which—close enough.

It ends up not being quite so simple as Steve plans. A late start, missing his first train, and a serious accident on the tracks means that it's getting on evening by the time Steve arrives in Sussex proper, and another hour before he grabs something to eat and finds the road. On foot, it's farther than it looks on the map. When he texts Tony to tell him he'll camp out overnight in the bungalow and catch the first train in the morning, he receives the nagging he expected for not upgrading his phone to Stark 4G before he left. _Coulda had Google Maps_ , Tony says, _Coulda been back in this excellent pub by now_ , and Steve puts his phone in his pocket as he turns down the twilit driveway.

The bungalow looks nothing like he imagined, and yet weirdly familiar: he's been over so many variations in his imagination, it's not unreasonable that some elements would be real. The lane's overtaken with rhododendron and craggy trees he can't identify, all of them leaning in close, like the wind blows around the property instead of through it. The house itself is a little rectangular box, whitewashed, with a skylight catching the last of the sunset on its edge, and few windows otherwise. A jaunty chimney sticks out of the top like a feather. The proportions make him squint until he realizes that there must be a tiny second story, a postage-stamp-sized room or two hunkering under the shingles. He hadn't known bungalows could have more than one floor. Two wooden benches stare each other down across the yard.

Steve's key—James's key—turns easily in the lock, and silently at that; someone's treated it with graphite dust. The hinges are quiet too. Everything is quiet out here, especially after New York and the insanity of London, the clatter of the train. An owl had hooted on the road a half mile back and scared the life out of him. The last time Steve's been this far out in nature was during the war, and they were generally making enough of their own noise to scare off (or scare quiet) any nearby fauna.

Inside, it's pitch-black and silent, dashing Steve's last lingering hope that James might still be here, somewhere, that there might be a just-boiled kettle or a pair of muddy shoes, still wet, or a breath in a corridor: evidence of human life. There's plenty of evidence of human passage—the cottage must be a hundred years old if it's a day, and he doesn't think anyone's changed the furnishings in all that time. The carpets under his shoes are worn down the middle and at the intersections by uncountable steps. Whoever owned the place before Peggy loved books like a religion; Steve can't see a single wall that isn't lined in shelves. They're mostly empty, but Steve finds a few haphazardly organized rows in what he assumes is the parlor, although all it holds is a single squashy armchair and an enormous fireplace. There's some paperbacks over by the chair and the fender, and near the window are stacks and stacks of larger volumes, all of them with cracked spines and curling covers. James was working on emptying the local used bookshop, clearly, before he left. Steve crouches to see the titles. With his amped-up night vision it's just bright enough to see them without pulling out his phone and blinding himself for five minutes: _Permanent Present Tense; The Blank Slate; An Anthropologist on Mars, The Neuropsychology of Memory_ —he was researching amnesia, Steve realizes with a jolt. The structure of the brain, the ways it can fail.

Whoever built the house not only loved books, but baths: the washroom is just about as big as the kitchen, which isn't saying much for the size of _either_ , but it's easily a quarter of the downstairs real estate, half of the room taken up by the most enormous clawfoot tub Steve's seen in all his life. The toilet is crammed in the corner like an afterthought. Across the hall is the bedroom: a mattress on a wooden platform, and a smaller fireplace, and more bookshelves lining the walls, a surprising number of them full. Steve makes a mental note to check them later, maybe in the morning. In the hall outside the kitchen, there's a folded-up easel leaning against the wall, and a bag full of paint tubes hanging from a coat-hook above it. Something twists painfully in Steve's chest when he sees them there, and then when he sees them as if for a second time, abandoned.

The kitchen leads out into the garden.

Steve closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and then another, and then—he just breathes, for a while. It's too beautiful to look at, right away, even in the dark. James had loved it, Steve knows, without having seen it in daylight, without having asked: it's beautiful. The things he knows about flowers can be summed up in a few Google Image searches, but the chaos sprawling out from the back door is exactly— _exactly_ what he imagined. He breathes. It's a warm night, but not sultry, and there's just enough of a breeze to make the hairs on his arms raise. He can hear some night-bird or bat squeaking above the trees. The murmur of speech from a nearby house, maybe the elderly couple who waved at him from their front yard when he passed by. Someone's dog barks, far away.

Steve's about to go inside when he sees the light: fireflies, further out, down over the little bridge in the lower part of the garden, where the ground slopes gently towards the shed. What the hell, he thinks: I don't have to go inside yet. He wanted to walk in James's footsteps, didn't he? And what better time than now, when it's dark and no one can see him, when the fireflies are out dancing? He does a little dance himself, over the bridge, feeling halfway between laughter and tears, the kind of hysteria that doesn't feel too wild, just a tingle under his skin like he's trying to move in two directions at once. His footsteps silent on the wood, on soft ground. He spins with his arms out like a kid, feeling ridiculous and not caring: once, twice, three times, before he's stopped by a leaning rosebush that scratches his elbow and snags the sleeve of his tee-shirt. He looks around as he's tugging himself free, at the gentle oval of the lower garden, at the shed with its roof all sway-backed, at the fireflies in the center, huddled as if against the breeze.

It takes Steve four more steps to realize that what he's seeing isn't fireflies.

There's two people, down there, laying on a blanket with a camping lantern between them. As Steve watches, one of them points up at the sky. The murmuring he's been hearing comes into context: it's not the neighbors, it's _them_ , speaking quietly with their heads angled together. Steve must make some noise in his throat, because one of them rolls half over onto their side, craning their neck to see.

It's James.

James down there on the blanket, James in the garden, James— _here_ , alive, pointing at the stars with a lantern reflecting eerily off the planes of his face, which are moving in a way Steve's never seen before, or hasn't for years, whichever's right to say, god, he doesn't know, but James is grinning hugely, his eyes wide and surprised as he calls “Steve!” up the path in his big rough voice, and Steve can't move a fucking muscle for the shock of it all.

Not until James shouts, exasperated, “C'mon, sweetheart, show some hustle,” and then Steve's jerking like a whip's cracked over his back, half-running down the slope to where James and his companion are sitting up on the blanket. The other person is an older woman, Steve sees now; she stands up as he approaches, brushing off her trousers. She's tiny, maybe less than five feet, gray-haired and thin as a plank of wood, the lines in her face scored deep, but Steve's having trouble placing an age on her: she could be forty, or she could be sixty. She leans close to James, murmuring something in his ear before she kisses his cheek. James doesn't seem to notice. His gaze is fixed on Steve. Steve sympathizes. He's having trouble taking his eyes off James.

“You must be Captain Rogers,” the woman says, offering her hand. Her grip is startlingly strong. “A pleasure to finally meet you,” she adds. She doesn't sound British, or—anything else Steve can identify, actually; her cadence is flat, no ups or downs, almost synthesized.

“Pleasure's mine, ma'am,” he says, rote, and she gives him the oddest smile, just a sharp flicker of upward movement he almost thinks he's imagined, it's there and gone so fast. She walks away with her hands deep in her pockets, big swaggering steps for such a delicate-looking woman.

Steve only realizes he's still watching her go when James says, “Took you long enough. What the hell did you do to your hair?”

“It's a disguise,” Steve says, turning. “And, hey, you didn't exactly send a detailed telegram, pal, you had me thinkin' the worst.”

“Yeah, well, next time I covertly invite you to a Sussex bungalow, I'll make sure to be less subtle.” James squints, leaning back on his hand. “Get down here, you're killing my neck.”

Steve sits carefully on the other side of the lantern, on the half of the blanket the woman vacated. He looks at James and feels a surge of joy too big for his body, stretching him at the seams. James looks viciously alive, like he's been _living_ ; hunting life with open hands. He's gained weight: his cavernous cheeks filled out. His hair is a few inches long, flopping in his eyes, and his earlobes are stretched a little under two more sets of piercings, and his grown-out beard is neatly trimmed. There's a faint dusting of silver on either side of his mouth. Steve's scared to reach out for him and break the spun-sugar moment between them, not touching each other with anything but their eyes, Steve reading contentment in the set of James's shoulders and James reading—whatever Steve's projecting, he doesn't know. He hopes it's that oceanic gladness, seeping through his skin.

“Your neighbor?” Steve asks, nodding towards the path, when he can't bear the silence any longer. It feels like a stupid question; he can't imagine a woman like that owning a cottage in the countryside.

“Old friend,” James says. Fighting a smile.

“How old?”

“She was born in '26, so. You tell me.”

“She _wasn't_ ,” Steve says. “How—she'd have to be—”

“When I said they all died,” James says, “I might not've been entirely honest.” He flops back on the blanket and sighs when Steve stares, mouth open. James puts his hand on his belly. “They called her the Nurse. I didn't know she was like me until—I guess it was 1990. Early serum experiment. A failure, technically, no regeneration, just—well, you saw her. Zola must've started on her when she was a teenager.”

“God.”

“She's his daughter,” James says.

Steve puts his hands over his face and sort of snarls into them. He doesn't know how to categorize the noise he makes; he's never made one like it before. It's angry and tired and sad all at once.

He feels as though he became jaded to evil people, at some juncture. The war, certainly, but. On a smaller scale, too many supervillains, and too many regular villains. Steve remembers being called to assemble for a rescue mission in a collapsed building, a catastrophe that could have been avoided if the contractor hadn't complied with the owner's cost-cutting wizardry. Twenty-one people dead, and over two hundred injured. Steve finds it hard sometimes to shake loose from the memory of himself—almost detached, as if he was watching it from a security camera—carrying the body of an adolescent girl out of the rubble. As much of her as he could find, anyway. The world is full of terrible people, taking advantage, hurting the vulnerable. He has to deafen himself to it to keep moving, some days. They become things. Forces of nature, like hurricanes. Terrible and largely unavoidable.

But Zola always seems to find a way to take the fucking cake.

“She's been here for three months. Little over three months,” James says, gathering Steve back to ground like he's winding up a thread. “She tracked me down—uh, literally. There's an ancient transmitter in my left heel, apparently, and she remembered the frequency. Had the old equipment and everything.” Cheerfully: “We've been catching up. Haven't seen her since Pierce, when she went to ground.”

“She left you there?”

James shakes his head at Steve's critical tone. “I was happy. Wouldn't have done any good if she'd stayed, they'd have eliminated her eventually. And besides, her job was over.” Steve makes a querying noise when he doesn't elaborate. James bares his teeth, almost a smile. “Continuing Zola's work,” he says evenly. Steve twitches. “Maintaining the miracle. She was Zola's insurance policy, someone who'd know how to take care of me after they put him in the machine. But Pierce thought I was, you know. Obsolete machinery. No point in taking care of something you intend on running until it breaks.”

“You're orphans,” Steve realizes, and only notices he's said it aloud when James shoots him a baffled look. “Sorry, just—it's like you two were foster kids with awful parents. You went through the same stuff and you understand each other.”

“Yeah,” James says. “Sure, that works. Although I'm still not sure I understand her. I don't know if anybody can. Her head's—she doesn't think like other people. She's...”

“Like a robot?”

“No,” James says, very certain. Then he grimaces. “Maybe. It just seems too—she _has_ feelings. I just don't think they happen in a straightforward way. I think she can choose how she feels, maybe. Like we can pull the lever on the slot machine but she has to move the wheels manually.” He exhales through his nose, pressing his lips together. “It must be really, really lonely. Is what I keep thinking.”

Steve hasn't thought about the Chitauri in a long time, but he used to a lot, mostly because Tony and Bruce were at the subject like dogs on a bone for a few months before Steve moved to DC. He's never gotten the story straight, but logically something must have been controlling them from the other side of the rift, its influence cut off when the rift closed. Tony thought they were a hive mind, theorizing about a vast intelligence, something like a queen bee. After Steve'd had a little distance from the battle, he'd started wondering whether it'd been strange, for them, bursting into a new world. If they'd felt anything at all in the moment the rift closed, before they collapsed: if they'd all been cut off from each other. If they'd felt abandoned. Steve glances up towards the bungalow and feels a complicated pang.

“She has you, at least,” Steve says. “That's not nothing.”

“I guess.”

“Where's she staying? I only saw the one bedroom.”

“There's a weird closet with a bunk in it, in the attic. Did you see the porthole under the eave?” Steve didn't. “Whoever built this place was kind of a nutjob, it was all asbestos lining with foil wallpaper up there. The clean-up guys said people used to homebrew insulation that way, if they didn't want to install heating.”

“I grew up in a windowless building where people dumped their garbage in the air shafts,” Steve says. “Honestly, nothing would surprise me.”

“There wasn't a toilet, either,” James says, so grimly offended that Steve has to laugh. “I tell you what, I didn't survive two autoamputations and seven decades of torture to live in a house with no plumbing, that's just fucking unreasonable.”

Steve scoots his butt over and lays down on his back next to James, the lantern and a good few inches of blanket between them. Even with the light, the stars are still clear, brighter by several degrees than DC or the outskirts of New York. All Steve recognizes is the Big Dipper, point-down like it's diving towards the horizon.

“Do you know the constellations?” Steve asks. “I saw one of you pointing.”

“Mm,” says James, which isn't an answer. “After I dragged your sorry ass out of the river—”

“You put it there, pal, it's only fair.”

“ _After_ ,” James says over him, “I crawled out of DC, couldn't tell you how. Wound up in this big field, and I only had one boot, I was totally fixated on that, for some reason, but—anyway, I looked up and realized they'd made me forget celestial navigation. I couldn't remember the names of the stars, how to find north, how to determine my latitude, _nothing_ , and it scared me worse than I thought anything could scare me, back then.” James moves his hand from his stomach to the back of his head. His elbow brushes Steve's hair. “I think that was the moment I figured out what deep shit I was in. I mean, before, I didn't really—there wasn't enough of a me in there. I just reacted, I didn't think for myself. But when I realized they'd taken something out of me, that there'd been a me who was _more..._ ”

“Did you get angry?”

“I tried to kill myself,” James says. Steve jerks, hurting with the effort of not turning his head, his whole body. “Didn't work, obviously. After that, I ended up in Philly, and you mostly know the rest, but. I did remember the stars. Eventually.”

“I'm glad,” Steve says.

“I've been remembering a lot of things,” James says quietly.

“You don't have to—”

“I know.” James laughs. “I know, believe me. But—it's okay. I...”

He trails off. Steve waits.

“I hated him,” James says at last. “Maybe that's not a surprise or anything—”

“Bucky?”

“Yeah,” James says. “See, thing is, from my point of view, he left. He left me. He went somewhere else and left me down in that ravine. He got to _die_. And I had to live through the surgeries and the training and the c-chair,” and Steve hears James's teeth click together hard, like he's trying to stop them from chattering. Steve lets his head tilt against James's elbow. “And,” James continues shakily, “They hurt me for knowing who you were.”

Steve can't help it: he turns over onto his side, hitting the lantern with his knee. It wobbles but doesn't fall over. “You—on the bridge—”

James nods. “I rec—no, I don't know if _recognized_ is the right word. I don't know if there _is_ a word. I didn't know your face, but I knew I'd seen it before. Not—” He huffs, frustrated. “Not the time before, when you threw your shield at me. It would've been fine, if that's all it was, because they didn't wipe me between that and the bridge. That kind of before wasn't dangerous. But I was coming around to the idea of—you know how they say that animals can only understand the present? They don't regret the past or worry about the future?”

“Squirrels bury nuts,” Steve says.

“I meant besides instinctual behaviors, smartass,” James says, almost fondly. Steve sticks his tongue out. It works; James looks less tense. “That was me. Sort of. It's hard to look back with 20/20 recall and—conceptualize what I was thinking, it's all just this. Blur. But I remember that, coming around to the idea that there was more than the present, that I'd done things I didn't remember, and I was really upset when they tried to take that away.”

“So when you fought me on the helicarrier,” Steve says, letting the end dangle.

“You kept saying I knew you after they'd just finished punishing me for it,” James agrees. Steve feels sick. “And then—and don't you beat yourself up over this, we've laid it to rest, okay?—and then, all the help I was getting from you was because of Barnes. So, I hated him. How could I not? There was so much I could _blame_ him for, shit, basically my whole life and everything bad that ever happened to me, I could pin it on him if I tried. And then, uh. I went to his grave. That time I was in Virginia.”

“I...” Steve bites his lip. James glances at him. “I wondered.”

“I'd been thinking he was the lucky one,” James says. The sweep of his eyelashes on his cheek as he turns back to the sky. “He got to move on, he didn't have to go through all of that shit. But standing over that poor kid's grave, which didn't even have a fucking body in it—I realized _I_ was the lucky one. I was _alive_. And the last little bits of him were hanging on for dear life inside my head while I walked free.”

Steve's assaulted with the memory of Bucky clinging to the railing of the train, dangling out over nothing but air, and sucks in a breath. He's helpless to imagine Bucky in James's head like that, screaming. Wanting to live. It hurts like a kick in the chest, and then: it must have been agony, he thinks, for James. Existing with that inside him.

“I'm not saying I was just suddenly serene about it,” James says. “It took a while to—I don't know, accept, acclimatize, whatever. I feel okay about it these days. I'm never going to be him again, but I was him, once. There's no disputing that. I think for a little while we might've even been the same.”

“Down in the ravine,” Steve ventures.

“Yeah. And later. I was still drawing portraits and things, in—I don't know when. For a while after they brought us to the States.” James pauses, his face slowly distorting; and then it relaxes all at once. “It's just, I was so wrapped up in hating him, and trying to _not_ be him, I was blowing it out of proportion. I was convinced it was all or nothing—if I remembered anything of his, then I was going to become him, or maybe I was obligated to become him. Or something. Like if I let myself accept anything of his at all it would just—open the floodgates and I'd disappear.”

“Can't really say that's an _un_ reasonable fear,” Steve points out. James snorts. “Well, c'mon. It's not like you were given a manual or anything.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” James says pointedly, “Like I said. I've been remembering. And it's—okay.”

“It's fine if you don't want to talk about it,” Steve says. “Or if you do. I just mean. I'm here, either way.”

James smiles at the stars. “I know, sweetheart,” he says. Steve feels warm. “I don't have much from the war, or what I guess was the war, but—the closer something is to a head trauma, the less likely somebody's going to remember it, apparently, so that's normal.” He laughs. “Normal. What a dumb word. It feels so weird, there's no context to any of them, so it's just...”

“Like watching a movie?”

“I guess,” James says. “Except not quite. Maybe like—people take videos of their babies and put them online, a lot. Share 'em with friends. But I was thinking, I wonder what those kids think when they watch them later, knowing it's them but not being able to remember crawling around or learning to walk or whatever. Maybe like that.”

“So.”

“So. Well—shit, I mean, they're nothing important, the rest of them.” James shakes his head. “I'll be doing something or thinking something, and I guess the brain makes associations, and all of a sudden I've got some new—clip. Laying on a roof in the summer. Sorting books in a library, I think. Dancing. Hiding behind a blue rocking horse. That one's really clear, for whatever fucking reason. Somebody was trying to give me a bath and I really didn't want to. Of all the things!” he says suddenly, and shoots a great big wry grin at Steve. “Of all the fucking things. I can't remember what my mom looked like or what my favorite food was, but I can sure as hell remember that I didn't want to take a goddamn bath!”

“A shame you didn't have that bathtub in the house,” Steve says. “I can't imagine any kid saying no to that bathtub. It's like a _pool_.”

“Think how much of a mess you could make,” James says earnestly, and Steve, trying to keep a straight face, feels his laugh go through his nose. “I do remember _your_ mom, though,” James adds, and Steve goes very, very still. He feels all of sixteen, like his bones have let out all their air and he's little again, like the soft night breeze is going right through him.

He says, small: “Oh?”

“Sure. Maybe because I drew her so often, like you said. I don't know. But I remember her face,” James says, and takes his hand out from under his head, moving it in the air like he's sculpting invisible clay. “Green eyes and dimples, neither of which you inherited, you poor sucker, I guess you took after your dad—but she had a smile that'd light up the room. Just like you. You smile like her. That's what I remember.”

 

* * *

 

Ten inches to his right, close enough to feel Steve's breath on his neck and still somehow miles away, there's the unmistakable sound of a grown man trying his level-headed best not to burst into tears. It breaks his fucking heart.

“C'mere,” Jay says, and throws the lantern off the blanket so he can pull Steve half on top of him. Steve clings immediately instead of fighting, which means he's been restraining himself this whole time. Jay should've grabbed him the second he sat down. “C'mere. God's _sake_. You're a mess, you know that? There you go. Come on, let it out. A little salt water never killed anybody.”

Steve tries to say something and fails. Jay strokes his hand up and down Steve's spine, trying to be soothing. Following an instinct, like draining a wound: “And I remember he loved you.” Steve jerks like he's been stabbed. He's totally silent when he cries. The only way Jay can tell is the dampness on his neck, the trembling under his hand. “God, how he loved you. I think sometimes he thought he'd die of it. We were worried about you, in the ravine, after we woke up. We couldn't remember who you were but we were worried. We knew we'd left someone behind.”

Steve shakes and shakes and shakes. Jay tries to be a rock, a place for him to come to ground once he's done purging this storm of grief, or anger, or whatever it is. He's glad to have had the practice. Eva and her kids from down the lane were over a few weeks back, and Eva'd been somewhere in the house when her youngest took a spill on the bridge, skinning up both her knees. The boys, horsing around in the bushes behind the shed, hadn't noticed, and when Lily'd rushed at him Jay had dropped his trowel in a panic and picked her up, giving her something to hang on to until her mom came out and kissed it better. He'd asked Eva later: is that what you do? When a kid's crying? Not always, she said; it depends on why. But if they're hurt and they come to you, always.

“Ssh,” Jay says, once he thinks Steve's starting to wind down. “S'all right.”

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles.

“You apologize for the stupidest things,” Jay says. Steve laughs wetly. “I always meant to ask. Did you love him?”

“What the hell kinda question is that?” Steve asks, sniffing hard. He wipes his face and nose on Jay's sweater, which...should probably be disgusting and isn't. What's become of you, Jay thinks at himself. “I can't—that's like asking if I loved my _lungs_ , it's not—”

“ _Wa Nahnu aqarbu ilaihi min hablil wareed_ ,” Jay says. Steve lifts his head. “It's, uh, from the Qur'an. It means: we are nearer to him than his jugular vein. It's supposed to be about God, I think, or angels, probably sacrilegious to—”

“No,” Steve says. He sounds startled. “No, I mean—that's. When were you reading the Qur'an?”

“Last month. After I remembered a bunch of awful shit from the nineties. I was in—Qatar, I think, for—never mind, it doesn't matter. I thought it'd help with context, and then it was a good excuse to practice my Arabic, and it was kinda beautiful, so I kept going.”

“It's huge!”

“So I got a lot of fucking time on my hands!” Jay says, which makes Steve really laugh, finally, and scrapes the last of the anguish off his face.

“But that's it, though,” Steve says, when he gets himself together. He puts one hand on top of the other on Jay's sternum, and props his chin on his knuckles, looking at Jay's face. “That's how it feels.”

Jay taps Steve's ribs with two fingers, as close to his heart as he can get from this angle. “That's where he is, Steve. That's where he'll always be.” Steve's face crumples up and he presses his forehead to the back of his hands instead, hiding it. “I get it, you know,” Jay says, putting his arm back around Steve's waist. “I miss him too. Sort of. In a different way. I think—I get the impression he was an easy person to love.”

“Yeah,” Steve whispers. “Yeah, he—he was.” He rolls his forehead on the backs of his hands before propping his chin up on them again, looking sad, but less raw. “I guess it's like how I miss my dad. He died when I was just three, I don't really remember him very well. Maybe—would it be easier, if you thought of Bucky as, I don't know. Your long-lost brother?”

“Nah,” Jay says. “If anything, he's my father. Obviously. C'mon, Rogers, he can't be my brother, I never had a chance to punch him.”

Steve laughs so loud he startles something lurking nearby. There's a great rattle and crash in the rhododendrons. The adolescent fox that's been coming around, probably; it might not recover from the indignity. They lay together and listen, but it doesn't come back.

“You know,” Steve says, “You punched _me_.”

Jay grins, certain that Steve can see it in the dark. Pretending not to understand: “And you dislocated my arm, what's your fuckin' point?”

“No, I mean—”

But Jay can't keep it together. Steve makes an aggravated noise and smacks him on the chest, so he smacks back, and when Steve tries to sit up Jay hauls him back down. It turns quickly into wrestling, Jay cackling louder than he should as Steve grunts and manages to knee him in the hip; his neighbors will have to be placated. He manages to roll them to the edge of the blanket, and pins Steve's shoulder on the wet grass. Steve yelps and curses. Jay lets him up, helps him back onto the blanket, but the damage has been done. Steve makes a futile attempt to flap-dry the back of his shirt while Jay idly digs the heel of his hand into his spine.

“Hurts?” Steve asks, noticing.

“It's fine,” Jay lies. He's going to feel it tomorrow, but. It was worth it. To move his body like it's a body and not a bag full of broken glass. He wasn't sure if he could, but the painting, the weeding, turning the compost pile—it must be helping, because he couldn't have done this in the winter. Not when he was still adjusting to regular physical activity and his bones were telling him all sorts of things he didn't need to know about the weather.

“Oh!” Steve says suddenly, reaching out and then stopping himself. Jay grabs his wrist and pulls it closer, encouraging, and Steve pulls up Jay's shirt high enough to see the port. “What happened to Joe?”

“Still not acknowledging that,” Jay says darkly. Steve grins. “It's retired, I'm on bolus feeds now. Five times a day, kind of annoying, but it beats carrying a machine around everywhere.”

“Hey, that's swell! I was kinda worried about how you'd hack it out here, but. You look good.”

“Thanks.”

“Really good,” Steve says, and then presumably flushes, because he quickly covers his eyes with his hands. Jay reaches into the grass for the lantern and holds it up. _Oh_ yeah. Red as a tomato.

“I see a year hasn't improved your flirting skills any,” Jay says.

“No thanks to you,” Steve mumbles, but he lets Jay pry his hands off his face. He looks sweetly embarrassed, his shoulders up around his ears. “I was never any good at this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Whatever this is. Whatever you want to call it,” Steve says, and then looks panicked. “I don't mean to pressure—I mean, it was so fast, before, if you're not ready for—”

“Rogers.”

Steve smiles crookedly. “Am I being an idiot?”

“Come here,” Jay says. He hooks his arm around Steve's neck. It's awkward, at first, both of them twisted, and then Steve tries to turn and get both arms around him. It hurts Jay's spine, so he pushes himself up and over Steve's thigh, sitting between his legs. Steve makes a soft, surprised noise.

“I know you,” Jay says, and feels Steve suck in a breath next to his ear. “And I trust you. How does that poem go? _i like my body when it is with your body, it is so quite new a thing..._ ”

“ _Muscles better and nerves more; i like your body_ ,” Steve says. “You turned into a regular college man without me. I haven't thought about Cummings in years—Bucky and I used to giggle over the racy stuff like idiots where we thought the librarians couldn't see us.”

“Eva down the lane's a lit professor,” Jay says. Steve's burrowing down into his neck like he means to live there. “I looked after her kids one time when the nanny got appendicitis and she had to proctor final exams, and now she brings me all sorts of stuff that's getting thrown out. She's—shit, you okay? When's the last time you had a hug?”

“You. The day you left.”

Jay knees him in the ribs. “You fuckin' martyr.”

“Ow,” Steve says mildly. “Nobody wants to hug me, I'm too intimidating.”

“What kind of idiots think that? Little you, maybe. I'd've poked my eye out on those cheekbones.”

Steve pulls back just enough to look at him. “Doing what?” he says, feigning innocence.

Jay swallows. He wants to—he wants. But there'd been rules in place, before; walls he could see. He wants so badly not to fuck this up.

“I, look,” he says, “In terms of expectations—”

“I don't expect anything.”

“I need you to know,” Jay says firmly, and Steve settles, attentive. “I was on a lot of drugs for a lot of years, I don't remember a time when I ever had a libido, and it doesn't seem like it's ever coming back.” He laughs: “Not like I would even know what it'd feel like if it _did_ , so. There's things I like. But if you've been entertaining fantasies of me nailing you to a mattress...”

He expects Steve to turn purple, but Steve just clears his throat and says, “There's, um, there's alternatives. Out there. If you ever wanted to. And I—wouldn't say no. But, for the record, that isn't any kinda dealbreaker.” _Now_ he looks shy. Jay feels his eyebrows lift. “I liked what we had. What we did before.”

“Spooning in closets?” Jay says dryly.

But Steve nods without any irony at all. “I mean, I wouldn't mind an actual bed being involved, at some point, if that's not too freaky.”

“Then you're in luck.” Jay gets awkwardly to his feet, trying not to step on any part of Steve in the process. He uses Steve's shoulder for leverage and then offers him a hand up. “Because I happen to have a bed, an extra pillow, and a pretty desperate need for some shut-eye.”

“Past your bedtime, old man?” Steve teases. Jay mock-shoves him once he's on his feet. Steve offers an elbow, and then says, “Oops,” and offers the other with a goofy, embarrassed grin. It's such a bright and boyish expression; it reminds him of the young men in their rowing uniforms who sometimes amble down the lane, teasing each other and shouting, their simple animal bodies, their wet hair. Jay doesn't think he's ever seen Steve this uncomplicatedly happy. It can't entirely be him, can it? He's only a single person, a messy conglomeration of cells and selves. He can't possibly be the source of that much light.

“What's that look for?” he asks, against his better judgment.

“You,” Steve says, as they start up the path, “Here, in the garden. It's just—was it everything you wanted? When you used to think about it?”

 _Yes_ , Jay thinks, startled, even as he struggles to remember. What was it he'd dreamed of? Flowers he couldn't name, then. The villages in the Mediterranean that had inspired him, honeysuckle on the eves, lavender spilling out between fence rails, a riot of honeybees. Kindly neighbors and children playing in the long grass. He'd wanted the old chair, and something he could fill with ice, he remembers now: it seems frightening and unpleasant in hindsight, after so long without cryostasis, after a year of hot baths in the clawfoot tub. He'd wanted flowers, and to never be alone. He'd been so frightened when he first arrived here, and then so busy keeping everything alive, he hasn't had an opportunity to reflect. To count his blessings. “Yeah,” he says aloud, his throat feeling gritty and strange.

“It's incredible,” Steve says. Hushed; he isn't looking at Jay, but out into the dark, between the climbing roses. “I—I'd imagined—I thought about it a lot. You, happy. Wherever you were.”

“I was,” Jay says. Steve turns. His radiant face. “I was. I am.”

 

☙

 

“What do you think?” Jay says, turning on the kitchen light. Steve doesn't seem to know where to look, his eyes still glued to Jay's, so he points at the hall, where three of the paintings make an uncoordinated triptych. Steve looks, and then double-takes, and walks over to them, his knuckles rising to his mouth. Jay watches him looking at them, feeling exposed, a little scared, but also warm, deep down. No one who really knows him has seen them, really seen them for what they are; even the Nurse didn't have the context. But Steve—

“This is the ravine,” Steve says breathlessly, pointing at the leftmost painting. At the rightmost: “And this is—DC, right? The stars? This one, I don't know, though.”

“It was in the fifties. Probably,” Jay says. Steve turns, holding his stomach almost like it hurts. “I might've escaped if the base hadn't been on an island. I wasn't really retaining memories around then, so I thought I'd never seen an ocean before. It, uh, made an impression.”

“Don't get me wrong, they're—they're amazing,” Steve says, turning to look at them again. “They're even really soothing, if you don't know what they're about. I'm so glad you—but. You hung them in your _hall_.”

“They were rattling around in my head anyway. I'd rather see them on the wall.” Jay kicks off his shoes on the mat. Steve follows his example. “Besides. It's culturally appropriate, right? Go on any of the house tours around here, you'll see what I mean. Game hunters used to hang their trophies everywhere. It's a statement, I guess: look at all this shit that tried to kill me and failed.”

“I like them,” Steve says, in case it was ever in doubt.

“I know,” Jay says, and turns him towards the bedroom.

At the threshold Steve suddenly lowers his voice: “Should we...”

“The Nurse?” Jay shakes his head. “She sleeps like the literal dead, don't worry.”

“Does she have—I don't know how to ask this without sounding like an enormous jerk.”

“You and names,” Jay says, nudging him. “You're as bad as Wilson, he tried to get me to pick something last year. Yeah, she knows what hers is. She just doesn't like it, on account of Zola giving it to her.”

Steve raises his eyebrows expectantly. Not looking where he's going; he trips on the carpet. “But you picked one, though.”

“Would've been pretty strange introducing myself to the neighbours otherwise, yeah. Jay. J-A-Y,” he clarifies, when Steve startles. “Why'd you start calling me J, anyway? You didn't like James?”

“I thought of you as James,” Steve says. “I don't know, it just seemed like—less pressure. It wasn't quite a name, but it wasn't not, either. You didn't pick it because of me, did you? There's a million variations. Jim, Jaime, Jack, Jem...”

“Believe me, I know. My phone thought I was expecting, after all the baby name websites I subjected it to on the way here. Six months of diaper ads. Hey,” when Steve glances at the bed and starts looking a little peaky, “You want to make yourself useful, boy scout? Start the fire in here while I do perimeter check.”

“Yessir,” Steve says.

When Jay comes back, firelight is playing off Steve's face where he's sat cross-legged on the foot of the bed, a book in his lap. Jay recognizes it as the collected Cummings; it's a hefty paperback some bored student attacked with a sharpie, coloring the tops of all the pages blue. “These aren't as funny as they were when I was twelve,” Steve says, but doesn't look up. “Wanna guess my favorite?”

“ _Humanity i love you_ ,” Jay says, as he takes off his sweater and shirt, “ _Because you would rather black the boots of success than inquire_ ,” his trousers, “ _Whose soul dangles from his watch-chain_ ,” everything else; and he offers his hand to Steve over the page as Steve says with him: “ _Which would be embarrassing for both parties—_ ” and Steve looks up.

He drops the book, and then he does the oddest thing.

He breathes in so hard it's almost a gasp, and his eyes shut hard even as he's standing, reaching out, fumbling blindly for Jay's arms, patting his elbow and the end of his stump before squeezing his biceps. Steve leans forward tentatively, almost as if he's moving in for a kiss, but his chin is tucked. Grasping at straws, Jay presses his forehead against Steve's, and a little of the steel goes out of Steve's hands. Right guess, then. But—

“Sorry,” Steve says. He sounds reedy, like he isn't getting quite enough air. “I can't—sorry. Give me a minute.”

“You've seen me naked before,” Jay says, a little incredulous. “When I was sick, which I'd argue is more naked than this, frankly. What's going on in there, huh?”

“You're right, I know,” Steve says. He makes a little huffing noise that's almost a laugh. “It's just, it's the dumbest thing, it's this _stupid_...”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“The bodies in the labs,” Steve says, and Jay feels like the room's dropped a few degrees. “In the war, they—they never had clothes, when we found them. I should've—I never got used to it. I don't know why _that_ and not any of the other things. They were shaved, usually, and I don't fly into goddamn tizzy every time I see a bald person. Just. Just nudity. When I'm not expecting it. Fuck, sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, my god.” Jay cups Steve's elbow and shoves him a little with his forehead, following when Steve sways back, skin-to-skin.

“I want to sleep with you,” Steve says miserably.

“I know,” Jay says. “I wouldn't be standing here starkers if I didn't think you were a sure thing, Rogers, come on, it's fucking freezing in here,” and Steve laughs, startled. “Hey, you can't say we're not made for each other, with my broken dick and your inability to look at naked people.”

“I can!” Steve protests, with his eyes still squinched shut. “I can—look, I'll—” He pats his way up from shoulders to neck, and moves his big hands over Jay's face, feeling his features. “There, see? I'm looking at you.”

“Okay, then: here.” Jay moves Steve's fingers to the scar under his right ear, the smear of chalk from the wildcat days. “What's that from, genius?”

Steve tilts his head like he's listening to something. “I don't know if I should tell you,” he says. “I'm kinda attached to the idea of using it for blackmail purposes.”

“Oh, it's like that, is it?” Jay says. “Eye for an eye? Fine, how about this. I'm pretty sure you were born in September. Internet says I'm wrong, but.”

“September 4th,” Steve says, aggrieved. “They changed it in the records after Kreischberg. _Fine_ , if you're gonna be all _sincere_ about it. We were fourteen-ish, running papers together, and we used to pick up our bundles in an alleyway two kids really shouldn't've been messing around in, and that day there were a couple of shady characters hanging around, throwing darts and knives and things at the crates. You bent over to pick up your bundle, and the one wise guy thought it'd be awful funny if he threw his knife between your face and the papers, scare the bejeezus out of you. I figure you can guess the rest.”

“I moved suddenly, like kids do,” Jay guesses, “And he beaned me in the face.”

“Yup,” says Steve. “On the plus side, they high-tailed it and you got to keep the knife. It was a nice knife.”

“I bet my mother thought that was a great consolation prize for me coming home covered in blood.”

“My ma gave your shirt a Viking funeral and your ma never found out,” Steve says, grinning blindly. His questing fingertips have found the eyelets in Jay's ears. “I like these, by the way. I didn't think I would, but I do.”

“Not quite big enough for handles,” Jay says, “But you can haul me around if you want to.”

“Uh,” Steve says. Flustered Steve is Jay's favorite Steve. “So when you said there were things you...liked—”

“I like kissing,” Jay says. He tries not to laugh and mostly fails, pretty sure that Steve can feel the vibration of it in his throat, his jaw. His mouth twitches. “It's been a while since my first lesson, admittedly. You might have to show me how.”

Steve opens one eye experimentally, squinting. He looks completely ridiculous. Like the little owl that lives in the rafters of the shed at the bottom of the garden. Whenever Jay goes inside to get something during the day, he always manages to provoke its waking-up routine: glaring lopsidedly, puffing all its feathers, shuffling its wicked feet. Uncanny. If Jay ever paints the owl, he'll put a little Captain America helmet on it.

“Natasha says I'm bad at it,” says Steve. “So I'm probably not the best tutor.”

“Good thing I won't be able to tell,” Jay says, and pulls him down.

 

☙

 

Jay startles awake in the middle of the night with a feeling that something's wrong. At first he thinks a log's just tilted and made a noise in the grate, but when he rolls onto his back, he realizes Steve isn't beside him. He spots him when he sits up: Steve's hunched over in front of the dwindling fire, his arms on the fender and his head down. It's a posture of abject misery. It feels like a boot to the chest, and has Jay scrambling out of bed about as fast as he can manage.

“Shit, sweetheart,” he says, sitting down hard on Steve's right side. He squeezes Steve's bent knee. “Hey, what's wrong?”

Steve shakes his head and then lifts it. He's not crying, like Jay expected, but he looks confused. Overwhelmed.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I just—” He turns unfocused eyes on Jay. “Do you ever get—as if there's too much in you, like—” Shakes his head again. “I can't explain it.”

“Try,” Jay says gently.

“Like everything's dialed up to eleven,” Steve grits out. “I was laying there thinking how lucky—how happy I was, and it got bigger and bigger, and then it—I couldn't stop thinking about the alternatives, if things had happened any other way, how—stupidly small our chances were. And I thought if I kept touching you I'd burn up. Like that woman who caught fire and all that was left was her legs.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you're a morbid little shit?” Jay asks, trying to stick a pin in the tension. Steve doesn't react. “Has this happened before?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “It just usually goes away without making me—” He balls up a fist. Jay puts his hand over it and feels Steve force it to relax. “Do something I didn't want to,” he finishes. “I thought this time would be different.”

“Stay put,” Jay says, “For just a second, okay?” and scurries off to the kitchen, thinking quickly. He's certain he's figured it out by the time he comes back with two wine glasses, stems slotted carefully between his wide-splayed fingers.

“Alcohol doesn't work on me,” Steve says, even as he's taking one.

“Bully for you, this is sparkling grape juice,” Jay says, and Steve laughs a little. “Kettle's slow as molasses and I can't drink with all the medications I'm on, so. Next best thing.”

“I've never been able to tell the difference anyway,” Steve admits. He taps their glasses together, the bright ring of crystal. “Cheers.”

“It's not a cure for anything, you know,” Jay says, once Steve's done throwing his back like it's whiskey. “Loving somebody. It's not going to turn your world upside down and fix all your problems.” Steve's grimace says as how he'd been thinking that, at least a little. “But I can see how it'd be frustrating that it might make them _worse_.”

“It just—hurts,” Steve says. “Thinking, you know. Even when I'm happy, something's there, making me think about all the ways I could lose somebody.”

“That's life,” Jay says, “Kicking you when you're down,” and Steve sighs. “You know what I think, though? It'll get better. Most things do, in one way or another.”

“You think I'm making a big deal out of nothing?”

“I didn't say that. Maybe it's—maybe you've got to walk before you can run. Maybe you've got to practice being happy before you can go all the way to cloud nine.”

“Goddamn demoralizing,” Steve mutters.

“I don't know,” Jay says. “I think it's kind of beautiful. That you can be paralyzed by joy.”

Steve gives him another of those owl-expressions, wide-eyed and startled, unblinking, before he tilts over and puts his head on Jay's shoulder. Jay steadies his glass on his knee and hooks his stump over Steve's neck like he's trying to keep him from floating away.

“Stop doing that,” Steve says. “Being...” He flaps his hands.

“Sorry,” Jay says. “I'll work on being a shithead.”

“Shouldn't be too hard. Ow!” Steve aborts a swat and pokes him in the ribs instead. “No fair using that arm, I can't fight back. I feel like I'm gonna hurt you.”

“Go for it, my adhesions need breaking up.”

Steve ignores him. “By the way, you were wrong. That wasn't actually my favorite Cummings poem.”

“Oh? Why'd you have it memorized, then?”

“Because,” Steve says. “It was Bucky's.”

Jay turns his face, pressing his mouth against Steve's hair. “Well, he had good taste.”

“Are you just saying that because it's _your_ favorite?”

“Plausible deniability,” Jay says, and Steve huffs a little laugh. “How long can you stay for?”

“I don't know,” Steve says sleepily. “Tony's waiting for me in London, and I'm an art coordinator at the VFW back home—my vets'll mount an international manhunt if I'm AWOL longer than a week. We'll figure something out.”

“He's the engineer, right?” Jay asks. Steve hums a yes. “Invite him here, he can help me fix the auger.”

“He'll strap rockets to it.”

“As long as it _works_.”

“He'll probably try to sweet-talk you into a prosthetic.”

Jay shrugs, jostling Steve's head. “If it means I can fuck around with a vegetable plot next year, maybe I'll let him.”

A log pops deep in the grate. Sparks come up spinning like little fiery insects. He read, somewhere, that things like this are good for the brain—fish tanks, too. Stochastic patterns, soothing tired cells. He'd noticed the effect long before he read about it, an observation made from those first sleepless weeks where every bat and badger going about its nightly business had startled him out of bed; he'd fallen asleep on the hearth-rug more times than not. On the bad nights, convinced that he deserved it, he'd tried to count and catalog the people he'd killed, a shallow penance he'd quit once he'd realized his self-absorbed wallowing wasn't helping anyone. He still feels deeply about wanting to do something substantial, to bring some good into the world for all the pain his hands stirred up. Something more than gardening, more than making the kids laugh. Maybe Steve can help him think of something.

When he turns his head to ask, Steve is out cold, breathing through his mouth, still a little congested from his breakdown in the garden. It won't be the last, he thinks: all of Steve's walls are down, now, after—Jay's certain of it—he's spent the last year trying to build them up. Gertie next door said Jakob did the same thing after the war, a sense of distance he'd worn like a coat, a layer of padding so it'd hurt less the next time he lost somebody. _My guy's a mess_ , Jay'd said, sitting beside her on the bench, watching Jakob and his pals stump their way through the world's slowest game of croquet. _How can I help him get better?_ he'd asked her.

 _You?_ she'd said. _Bugger-all. That's on him; you can't change another person. But you can be a lighthouse, when he's lost in the dark._

Troubles, he's come to think, can't be helped by one thing alone. Grief, hurt, trauma—not anything that wants fixing. People say it's time, or distance, or love, but you can have all of those in their purest form and not affect any change at all, if it isn't the right moment. If the flesh isn't ready. And they're none of them cures, not individually, not as a collective. If there's any cure at all, he thinks, it's living. Day to day. The monotony and the fumbling and the moments of light—the laundry, the bills, the weeding; children in the long grass. Pruning the goddamn rhododendrons. You put dead things in the compost pile and they come back to life, in another form. Nothing is ever truly destroyed.

He raises his glass to the fire. Steve, asleep on his shoulder, doesn't stir.

“Goodnight,” he says, “And thank you. Sergeant Barnes.”

 

_**fin.** _

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my father, who made the mistake of asking, "What do you think the Winter Soldier was up to in 1963?" Two years and 150,000 words later, here's my complete lack of an answer. I love you, you gigantic dork.
> 
> If this project has a theme song, it's Shearwater's breathtaking [_You As You Were_](https://soundcloud.com/subpop/shearwater-you-as-you-were-1), which I listened to on a constant loop during the final week of writing.
> 
>  **All the notes and references have been collected[here, on my sideblog](https://redstarwhitestar.tumblr.com/post/159201921180/the-gigantic-there-must-have-been-a-moment)**. You can find me on Tumblr [here](http://magdaliny.tumblr.com), for pretty things and babbling, and [here](http://redstarwhitestar.tumblr.com), for Marvel content and official writing updates.
> 
>  **Update:** If you liked _Moment_ , check out the [post-credits ficlets!](http://archiveofourown.org/series/818109)
> 
> To everyone who cheered me on while I was writing, who read the beast when it was done, and/or left appreciation in many forms: there isn't enough gratitude in the world. You're my actualfacts Personal Heroes and I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sussex](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12240396) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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